I have always loved music and my mother had music in the house all the time.

When I was about five or six, I used to make up a lot of songs on the piano and believed I would one day become a great composer. I started playing this catchy tune, which I thought would be one of my first masterpieces.

To my disappointment, I realised the song was already taken. It was part of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony. For many years I could not come to terms with the fact that somebody else had already used that tune. When I grew up, I finally had to accept the fact that the reason that tune was in my head was probably because my mother played her classical music records all the time.

I spent most of my early life with music, learning to play the violin and listening to a lot of cool CDs.

I drifted away in pursuit of other things that interested me, but music is back in my life again. I have joined a pretty prestigious non-professional orchestra that have sold-out concerts where I play the violin. My kids are old enough to learn instruments. Perhaps it all began with Beethoven, because the first song I ever loved (knowing it was Beethoven this time) was the fourth movement of the 4th Symphony. It still gets my heart pumping with anticipation and excitement around the part where the third movement ends building up the the last movement.

Or the 7th Symphony I discovered in my twenties that got me off my bum when I was down and depressed from all the disappointments in my life.

Beethoven’s music have always been with me and I know I always will love him.