Is the CD made in Basra by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards really “the first album recorded in a war zone”? That depends on how you define “recording”, “album” and indeed “war zone”.

Throughout the 20th century many classical musicians were brave to the point of recklessness about ensuring that “the band played on” when bombs were falling. Sometimes there were microphones present and the recordings are now often available on CD.

During the Second World War the Berlin Philharmonic kept performing almost to the end in the besieged city. I’ve heard the famous German radio broadcast, from May 2, 1945, that’s interrupted by a sombre voice announcing “Der Führer ist tot”. It’s an unnerving moment, especially as the music chosen to follow the long eulogy to Hitler is the Unfinished Symphony.

Opera recording went on in Vienna and Munich while both cities were under bombardment. When the great German bass Hans Hotter was asked to explain the white-hot intensity in his magnificent 1944 Munich recording of The Flying Dutchman, he replied tersely: “160 air raids.”

Making music in extreme circumstances has a propaganda value. One of the most famous recorded concerts occurred in 1948 when Leonard Bernstein led the Israel Philharmonic across the desert in an armoured bus, at the height of the War of Independence, to play three piano concertos in the frontline town of Beersheba. So many soldiers gathered to listen, the story goes, that the Egyptians were deluded into believing that Israel was massing troops for a new attack. They couldn’t swallow the notion that, in the middle of a war, people would stop for music.

Similar composure was shown in the 1980s when the Ulster Orchestra played on in Belfast. During a piano concerto, a terrorist bomb exploded just up the street. The terrified visiting soloist dived under the piano for cover. But the orchestra never missed a beat. So after a few bars the pianist sheepishly climbed back on his stool and resumed his performance.

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