‘I believe in the machine,’ said Roberto Gerhard, ‘but only if imagination at all times has the upper hand,’ thus capturing the essence of his Third Symphony, with its part-mechanical, part-spiritual inspiration. The impulse for the work came – so the story goes – during a trans-Atlantic flight, as a heavenly sunrise broke over clouds high above the Irish coast. ‘Like the blast of 10,000 trumpets,’ is how Gerhard later described it …