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One of Haydn's best jokes turns up this week on Monday afternoon in his . Haydn's subtitle for the piece was Il Distratto, because it consists of incidental music he had been asked to write earlier for a play by the ' resident drama group. This 'distraught' symphony is full of oddities; abrupt changes of gear, howling high horns and unexpected pauses pepper its six movements. But the best moment comes in the finale, when everything stops - to allow the violins to retune their lowest strings from F up to G. It's a neat joke and well set up. It makes me wonder if anyone has a similar favourite moment - and I don't just mean in the ?

Incidentally, the performance is part of an amazing package dreamt up by the Radio 3 programme planners for this week. It's called 'The 49th Parallel - Music from the US/Canadian border' [!] and runs from 2-4 pm daily. At first, I thought it must be another joke to match Haydn's, and then I realised it was a way of packaging up recordings by North American orchestras. So, on Monday afternoon, the whole series begins with the under playing the afore-mentioned Symphony No 60.

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