I sat alone at the kitchen table, the acrid scent of burnt toast still lingering in the air. Outside, the rain traced long, patient threads across the windowpane. In that moment, a raven landed on the windowsill.

It looked at me – neither with resentment nor with kindness, only with a gaze that seemed to hold weary understanding.

‘If when, then,’ said the raven.

I did not reply.

An encounter with Beethoven and the Adagio from his ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, Op. 106.