We know the stillness will not last, but it lingers, stretching and tightening with anticipation. Suddenly the air is filled with sound. The sound is relentless, dense, almost touchable, it expands into every crevice, washing around the dark motionless walls and heads and shoulders.

Two thousand pairs of eyes gaze at the stage, lifted from the cavernous, wedge- shaped space by a pool of light. There, seven musicians sit in horseshoe formation, intently looking at their scores, but one of them, with his shoulders turned away from the mass of people, barely needs to look, because this score, this music, now resonating through everything and everyone, originated in his mind thirty years ago. With his whole body he nods to his musicians and they respond by gently leaning this way and that, and we, the audience, mirror that movement, like a forest softly swaying in the wind, and for four hours all of us are woven together within a cathedral of sound.

Afterwards, when all have left, the concert hall once more becomes a void, stark and bright, bereft of purpose.