Claus Moser had a wide circle of true friends, many of them drawn from politics and university life, but his lifelong passion was music. He played the piano very well and studied it seriously into his old age, first with Louis Kentner and latterly with Imogen Cooper and Graham Johnson. He loved performing the Mozart concertos with orchestra and I recall in particular a concert at St John’s Smith Square, conducted by a very young Daniel Harding, at which he enchanted the audience with his evident joy (and skill) in music-making, only to cause a momentary wave of horror when, after taking his bows, he swooned into unconsciousness, fortunately for only a few minutes.
In fact Claus’s great physical resilience – and even more important, his willpower – saw him through many illnesses and physical setbacks. I was lucky enough to play piano duets with him regularly for half a century. We concentrated on the Viennese school: Mozart, Beethoven and above all Schubert (the Fantasia was his favourite). In recent years, after he had experienced difficulties in co-ordinating brain and hands, he felt his duet days were over and he presented me with his copy of the duet version of Don Giovanni, saying he would no longer be needing it. But he agreed to try once more one of our regular fun “warm-ups”, Mozart’s D major sonata, and mirabile dictu his memory helped to guide his fingers unerringly through all three movements; it was very moving to share with him this coming back to musical life.
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