A leading British violinist is returning home with his instrument case stuffed with thousands of pounds after busking in 50 cities around the world to raise money for charity.

David Juritz, 50, has raised more than £30,000 — including £7,000 dropped into his violin case — to provide music education to children in the developing world since leaving his London home on June 9.

“Everything has been more extreme than I imagined — with the exception that I was expecting to be arrested and I have not been,” he told The Times in New York yesterday as he prepared to fly home on Tuesday.

“And I have not been mugged and I thought I would have been a couple of times,” he said. “I have been carrying around a case full of cash and no one thought to relieve me of it.”

Mr Juritz has performed at the Proms and as a soloist, guest artist and concertmaster of theMozart Players in London. He played on the soundtrack to the Oscar-winning film The Last King of Scotland and has recorded with the Sugababes.

The South African-born musician came up with the idea of playing Bach’s solo violin works on street corners around the world — just as he had busked while a student at the Royal College of Music — to raise money for charity.

He launched his tour, dubbed “Round the World and Bach”, at his local Tube station, Turnham Green in West London, with nothing but an empty wallet, a rucksack and his violin. The tour has taken him to Paris, Vienna, Soweto, Kampala, and Hiroshima.

“The best spots were places I was not really expecting it to be. I was not sure Australia was going to be interested in Bach, but the Australians came through,” he said. “In Hong Kong, which I had been warned would be disastrous, it turned out to be tremendous.

“I hesitate to call anyone stingy because sometimes you just get the wrong spot,” he said diplomatically. “But Berlin was miserable. I got just €11(£7.68) after a whole day of blood, sweat and tears. Then I went the next day to Leipzig and made €284 in two hours.” Mr Juritz says that London remains the best place to busk — particularly since he was guarded by a concerned bobby.

Second-best was Stanford University, in California, where he took $480 (£240) in just over half an hour. “What really surprised me was, I found that outside a concert hall is a very difficult place to crack it,” he said.

In Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, he was touched by the generosity of the street children. “They were hanging around for almost an hour, basically begging,” he said. “I was thinking these are exactly the kind of kids we would like to be involved in our programme, and thinking, ‘I would not be surprised if one of them has a little dip into the fiddle case’. But in the end one of the kids came over and dropped a few coins into the case.” The high spot of the tour was a stop at Kampala, the Ugandan capital, where the charity Musequality will fund music lessons for 50-70 children aged 11 to 17, teaching them to play keyboards, guitar and recorders.

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