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Then there is the German composer Werner Egk, (1901-1983), who resided at Inning on the Ammersee until his death. His opera Peer Gynt was a masterpiece but the Germans protested against this composer as late as 1982 on account of Egk's alleged Nazi connections, although the composer's surviving sister, a Catholic Nun in Augsburg, maintains that these rumours are rubbish. 'They say that because my brother kept composing while the war was going on. But this what composers do, they compose. It is their job.' Egk's La Tentation de Saint Antoine is a moving vocal oeuvre, considered by experts to be as French as any of them.

Maybe you will discover some more forgotten geniuses as you listen through the alphabet at Beck's on your next trip to Munich. Some fifteen CD players are there for people to listen to their selections and on a rainy day they are all occupied. Opera singers performing at the nearby Bavarian State Opera may have a final listen to a piece they are about to perform, members of orchestras may be sitting by your side, listening to someone else's interpretation of their upcoming performance, or former students of the great Sergiu Celibidache, many of whom are still living in Munich, may be there listening themselves through their old friend's Bruckner performances on EMI.

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