Sandscript

Autumn brings the start of the main concert series of Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, one of the best orchestras in the country. Music is one of the themes in my novel 'Brief Encounters of the Third Kind' and live performances have inspired some of my lighter short stories - what would happen if Granny got on the stage in the interval and started playing the timpani or what would be Beethoven's reaction if he travelled forward in time and heard a modern interpretation of his music?
We once went to a performance of Verdi's Requiem with the B.S.O. and the wonderful Bournemouth Symphony Chorus. It was thrilling to hear this piece live for the first time and hard to describe in words. But I did get an idea for the weekly short story at writers' group. I contrived to have an atheist who had committed terrible murders sitting in the audience, the rolling depths of the music bringing him to the awful realisation he must face his Maker one day!
The story's construction didn't really work and one of the group said she went to hear Verdi's Requiem once because her friend was singing in it and she had never been so bored in all her life!