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The Aurora Orchestra and conductor Nicholas Collon are regulars at Saffron Hall and never fail to thrill with their engaging playfulness and immediacy – characteristics shared by Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who performs Shostakovich's Violin Concerto No.1.

With its famously dramatic opening, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is made all the more exciting in a performance given entirely from memory, the absence of music stands and scores creating an electrifying intimacy between orchestra and audience.

For this concert, which forms part of Cambridge Summer Music Festival, BBC Radio 3's Tom Service joins Nicholas Collon to introduce the symphony, harnessing the unique potential of an orchestra playing by heart to get beneath the skin of Beethoven's music in new and illuminating ways.