Sunderland welcomes the sitting-room string quartet
If the most you’ve ever won in a raffle is a bottle of alcohol-free wine or a box of chocolates well past their sell-by date, look away now. David and Elaine Hannington recently struck extra-lucky when their tickets for a prize draw earned them a performance by four players from the Royal Northern Sinfonia in their own home. With dining table and sofas presumably stashed elsewhere, the Hanningtons, regular Royal Northern Sinfonia concert-goers who had been entered for the draw by contributing to the orchestra’s 60th Anniversary Appeal, found room in their Sunderland house not just for their quartet of performing guests but also a handful of admiring friends as well. ‘It was a wonderful, magical experience to hear such beautiful music close up in our own home,’ says David. ‘I can honestly say it will be a life-long memory.’.