A boy sits in a small room of a small house in Hamburg practising the cello, the distracting sounds of family life ever-present around him. He is ten years old, and already an accomplished pianist. In fact, he has recently played the piano in a concert in which all the other performers were adults, colleagues of his father. The boy played in Beethoven's Quintet for Piano and Winds Op. 16, and in one of the piano quartets of Mozart. He also played a solo etude by the fashionable and flashy Henri Herz. The concert was arranged to raise money for the education of this remarkably talented child.