Our Beethoven is the last item in a programme whose first half consists of contemporary music. After the searching, dislocated quality of the modern music, Beethoven suddenly seems a) old, and b) new. One becomes aware of the modernity of his radical ideas, and yet also of his deep affirmative embrace of the style of this own time. He rests in it and affirms it. How diverse everything is now! National styles, post-modernism, pop, club, world music, minimalism, ethnic links and so on. Certainly Beethoven wasn't asking himself the plethora of questions that today's composers are asking: Shall I write in a key or not? Can I have tunes? Should I use the instruments in an unexpected way? And yet he seems to have out-thought most 20th-century musical inventors.

The audience sits to our left and right as well as in front of us. This creates an eccentric acoustic and well as psychological effect. The sound is dry and exposed, and we don't know to where we should project. Yet despite the curious layout of the hall, the atmosphere is wonderfully quiet and concentrated. It proves once again that we must think of drawing the audience in, being a magnet - not spreading ourselves thinly over the hall.