Hooked on classics? But if you want to learn to play, you’d better be posh

Sir Simon Rattle conducts the LSO with young musicians from east London at the BMW Classic 2023 LSO Concert in Trafalgar Square, London, last month. Photograph: Doug Peters/PA

I had a music teacher at school who introduced me to my favourite Beatles song, Eleanor Rigby; who explained the opening sequence of Martin Scorsese’s outstanding 1995 film, Casino; and who told me, very cheekily, that Fabio Capello – the cultured manager of the England football team between 2008 and 2012 – had a name that literally translates into English from Italian as “fabulous hair”.

What I didn’t know then, but do now, is that the connective tissue between these intimate, but seemingly disparate, memories – a pop song, a gangster film, a football manager – is a subject that is often seen as alienating: classical music. Paul McCartney was listening to Vivaldi when he created the melody of Eleanor Rigby. The opening scene of Casino features Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Capello is a fan of the Russian conductor Valery Gergiev.