In the early 1970s, every morning a seven-year-old boy performs the same ritual: he goes out of the front door, turns the corner and enters a tiny shop packed with records. Here a smartly dressed gentleman, with a jacket and tie and a handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket, satisfies the boy’s precocious passion for record-collecting. Thus begins the absorbing story of the initiation of a man who is both a great musician and a dedicated, talented writer.

In some ways Carlo Boccadoro’s career has resembled that of many other composer-conductors, but what marks him out is the interest he has always had in a wide variety of kinds of music. This artistic curiosity has taken him into all areas of contemporary music: he knew Luciano Berio and Philip Glass and has interacted with the music of Stockhausen and John Cage, as well as with performers of his own compositions, notably Riccardo Chailly.

These musical encounters, sometimes personal, even comical – as with his three hundred battery turkeys which sing a duet with a singer and end up on a record – are recalled in this book, in a series of memoirs and anecdotes and discussions of the musical ideas which grew out of them.

12 – the figure in the title alludes to the number of chapters in the book – is driven by a narrative which introduces the reader to the secrets of musical interpretation and the mysteries of composition, but also shows how a musician’s profession is one which is constantly being learned, day after day, and which is exposed to the risk of failure even at times when it receives the greatest public acclaim.