Peter Plinker was born in Bath on the 14th of March 1873. He was an only child. His father, Ferdinand, was a farrier, and his mother, Maria, a milliner.

Plinker’s talent was apparent from an early age. While still a toddler, he astonished onlookers by singing enthusiastically along to a production of Don Giovanni. Sadly, though he also made a brave attempt at beating time with his rattle, his precocity was not spotted by the conductor, who sensationally halted the opera halfway through to request that ‘someone silence that little brat'. When the infant transgressed again, a brute of a man exploded out of the orchestra pit (he was second flute), tore him from the arms of his protesting mother, and literally threw him out of the auditorium.

This early setback aside, Plinker was encouraged in his love of music, particularly by his mother, herself an accomplished soprano. When Plinker was five years old, a meeting with the area’s leading pianist, Arthur Gobbett, provided the opportunity for arrangements to be made for the tutelage of little Peter. Gobbett’s visits were frequent, and Peter learnt quickly. Before long he was giving concerts to packed houses in his home town.

Impressed with his pupil’s commitment, Gobbett suggested he attempt a little creative activity of his own. Plinker did not need to be asked twice, and, after several tentative drafts, produced Ships, a scherzo, which he played for the first time in Bristol on the 17th of January 1881. Despite, or perhaps because of, its childish simplicity, this went down very well. That summer he was invited to appear in Vienna, and it was to his deep regret that an attack of mumps prevented him from fulfilling the engagement. He did not, however, lie idle during his period of sickness and convalescence, but spent hours at his piano, by the side of which he now slept so that whenever a moment of inspiration reached his ever-alert brain he would always be ready to take advantage and mould from it a composition; he kept manuscript paper, a quill pen and a bottle of ink on top of the instrument.

The next few years were highly fruitful as the prodigy greatly expanded his œuvre. By Plinker’s fifteenth birthday Gobbett was moved to acknowledge what he had for some time privately suspected would happen: the pupil had outgrown the master. He was not being unduly modest; it was clear to all who heard Plinker that he was an exceptional talent. With his mentor’s backing, Plinker enrolled at the prestigious Leipzig Conservatory, where he studied for four years and all but perfected the lissome style that was to cement his reputation.