A storming success
In the November issue (Letters), you ask us for the first pieces that got us into classical music. In the 1950s, when I was ten, my father bought a small record player and got me a 10-inch LP of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony from the cheap-andcheerful Classics Club. I listened with fascination to the ‘story’, and played the record many times without knowing much at all about classical music. I then had to sit the 11-plus exam, and when I was given the English Essay paper, there on the list of optional topics was ‘The Storm’. I didn’t stop to see what the other choices were; I just started writing. I didn’t have to plan the essay: Beethoven had already done that. I told the story of the Pastoral through the eyes of the walker in the country. I never saw my work
again, but I still think it was one of the best things
I have written, and the examiners must have
liked it. I reckon I can
still identify the moment when the peasants say, ‘Uh-oh, looks like rain’, and the moment between
the fourth and fifth movements when the sun comes out. Whether Beethoven meant it this way is, of course, another matter.
Martin Cooper
Newport, Isle of Wight