This was not surprising, as the "fairies" were cut-outs from just such a book, illustrations for Alfred Noyes's "A Spell for a Fairy", published in Princess Mary's Gift Book in 1915. The girls, however, insisted time and again that these were real fairies. The photographers were two young girls, Frances Griffiths, aged ten, and her cousin Elsie Wright, who was sixteen. They had photographed each other in the company of an assortment of tiny, gossamer-winged fairies of the sort seen in many illustrated books of the day. Grieving relatives would willingly pay good money for pictures of what they believed to be beloved ghosts, but only if they could be assured that no cheating (usually double exposure) had taken place.In May, 1920, Doyle heard from a friend that "two photographs of fairies had been taken in the North of England, under circumstances which seemed to put fraud out of the question". Among the most popular forms of evidence were "spirit photographs".

The Doyle "Home Circle" was one of millions, all hoping for messages from loved ones who laid dead in the Flanders mud. In an age of waning faith, psychical researchers looked for scientific proof of life after death. For Doyle, as for so many others, the loss of a son in the first world war had transformed a mild interest into a passionate search for certainty. But the story behind this book is far more interesting than the sad and credulous tale contained within it. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Coming of the Fairies was first published in 1922. By that time the author had long abandoned Sherlock Holmes, and was devoting his life to preaching Spiritualism. Orchestral execution fluctuated between good and scrappy, with Andrew Smith's timpani raising a storm from the rear. The concert's close brought courteous acknowledgement of the various instrumental choirs and section leaders, which made Levine's rude treatment of Brahms all the more conspicuous Like words spoken in anger, it was best forgotten..

Here is the fons et origo of all those fairy films. The Passacaglia finale was again swift and unyielding - I'm tempted to say "post-Toscaninian", except that Toscanini himself was invariably more flexible. What, I wonder, had happened to the acute mind that, earlier in the evening, had shaped the Overture with such intelligence? Even the Andante moderato seemed uncomfortably tense (the lustrous string tune at its centre had an air of desperation about it), and the Scherzo, although energetic, stopped short of exultation. Certainly, there was little suggestion of the impatience, even irritability, that marred the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, where Levine erected an impenetrable wall of sound, pushed the pace, pressed the strings to uncomfortable steeliness and generally bulldozed his way through some of the most equivocal pages in Brahms's orchestral output. I suspect that a less earnest maestro might have inspired him to greater lyricism. Levine's conducting was strongest in the finale, where the swift tempo suited the mood and the principal theme donned a rustic lilt, though the Tragic Overture that opened the concert was also fairly impressive, what with its surging string lines, heavily stessed accents and confident grasp of structure. It burst upon us as the climax of an overwrought first movement where Vengerov took his lead from Levine's powerhouse conducting.

Or should I say that Levine had accommodated Vengerov's breathless virtuosity? Whichever the case, repose was in short supply, and so were those those crucial instances of phrasal punctuation that lend depth and perspective to the musical dialogue. Where was the colour, the shading and the expressive subtlety that we know Vengerov is capable of? To be honest, he seemed rather ill at ease. The long opening tutti found him fumbling in his pockets, adjusting his chin-rest and glancing warily towards the rostrum. Once "launched", he'd occasionally rush the bar-line, slip from the note's centre or settle for uncharacteristically mechanical phrasing; and yet the sheer energy of his playing, the brilliance of his left hand and the seemlessness of his bowing were often remarkable.