Abstract

It’s not much to look at, the stretch of road between the Helensburgh roundabout and Luss on the west side of Loch Lomond. But that small section of the A82 resounds with music for me – to be precise, the scherzo from Anton Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony. The first time I listened to that piece, in Eugen Jochum’s recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, that’s where I was, travelling in the back of my family’s car. The shock of the music, its intensity and its stark beauty, burnt itself into my memory, and is forever etched into the landscape at that precise point of the journey north from Glasgow.