My love of Carl Nielsen’s music dates from my late teens. Circa the Whitlam dismissal, still living at home, I drove my mum crazy by wearing out a treasured disc of Paavo Berglund and the Bournemouth playing the Fifth Symphony cranked to the max on the AWA.

Then I got hold of an Inextinguishable from somewhere.

I can’t trace the date or remember the conductor (was it Edo de Waart?), but when the SSO finally took a punt on programming the Fifth, I was in the choir seats directly behind the snare drum player.

During the passage in which Nielsen instructs the percussionist to improvise and do their damnedest to drown out the orchestra’s uplifting hymn, this – from my perspective – gave him a head start. I hate the guy who, like those cognoscente of obscure cool bands, so can’t wait to demonstrate his unique esoteric understanding of a piece that his solo bravo is resounding around the hall before the final note has decayed.

I’m afraid I was that guy.

In my defence, my heart had started pounding at the return of the final movement’s leaping theme and, as the coda approached, it threatened to leap, too – out of my mouth...