Rather than merely shaking my hand, Evelyn Glennie gives it a vigorous rattle, as if curious to discover what sound it might produce. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” she says, although we are meeting a few minutes early.

Glennie’s own hands, incidentally, seem surprisingly small. You’d hardly imagine they have spent the past four and half decades playing marimbas, drums, xylophones, timpani, glockenspiels or any of the multiple percussion instruments that she has mastered. Glennie was the first person ever to establish a full-time career as a solo percussionist. Now, at 59, she remains the most highly respected figure in the field, having been awarded a damehood in 2007 and appointed to the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2017.

We are meeting at The Old Bridge, a cosy and characterful hotel restaurant in the Cambridgeshire town of Huntingdon. This is a rather liminal part of the world in which busy roads and junctions bisect expansive fields, but there is one big attraction: a short drive away is Glennie’s office, in which she has amassed more than 3,800 instruments, as well as other artefacts from her 40-year career. I’m hoping that, later this afternoon, she will take me there.