Brief Encounter

If you’re not a lover of classical music, you encounter it in strange places. It’s the music you hear on adverts or at busy train stations prone to antisocial behaviour.

It’s the productivity-boosting playlists Spotify recommends when you search for something, anything, that might stop you procrastinating.

In each of these examples, it’s music as background noise, a passive or subliminal experience. If it elicits a response in you, it’s via some sneaky biological back-channel.

The last time I remember listening – actually listening – to classical music, the venue wasn’t exactly a concert hall. It was a brightly lit fast food restaurant in north London where a piece of music I recognised but couldn’t name provided the soundtrack to the most blissful cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten. And I’ve eaten a few.

Perhaps you’ve guessed by now, but I am not a lover of classical music. It’s not that I dislike it, but when I was growing up, my parents played the Eagles at home, not Elgar, and