An afternoon listening to Beethoven's symphonies

Recently, I've finally been copying most of my classical music CDs to my hard drive. Today, I ripped a boxed set of the Beethoven symphonies by Claudio Abbado with the Berlin Philharmonic, so while grading essays all afternoon, I also listened to the symphonies in order. I haven't listened to them in years, and I'm far from being a classical music aficionado (I know jazz far better), but again and again I found myself smiling and laughing when familiar passages came up, perhaps from having listened to this Abbado collection quite a few times a while back, or perhaps even from hearing my parents play classical music stations throughout my childhood. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 26 October 2021)