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You know that it is really warm in the hall when a special announcement before the concert is made apologizing to all the ladies in the house that the men in the orchestra will be playing without their suit jackets due to the heat. We in the audience, fanning ourselves incessantly, were only too happy to be forgiving, as the orchestra must have been fairly melting under the lights.

I have to start with a confession: I’ve always been very lazy about making the effort to listen to Beethoven symphonies. When tonight’s Northern Sinfonia concert with Heinrich Schiff was announced, the attraction for me was always the Shostakovich cello concerto that was originally programmed.