Leeds

Witold Lutosławski was invited to a concert in Leeds in January 1986. He happened to be leading a rehearsal on his birthday, and Charles Bodman Rae was listening in the hall. ‘Near the end of the rehearsal, when Lutosławski had put down his baton and said that the rehearsal was over, finito […], the orchestra played in Lutosławski’s style, in aleatory technique, the familiar song ‘Happy Birthday to You’, related Rae years later. He was already a Lutosławski expert and was working on his dissertation about his music. He defended it in 1992 and two years later published the monograph The Music of Lutoslawski.