Confessions of an illegal downloader

I’ve never been into shoplifting, though I once had a friend who was. And, no, before you ask, I’m not using that old ‘friend’ device to hide my own identity. She was a girl I met at university. Bookshops were her hunting ground. I’m assuming she was driven by some sort of compulsion because she couldn’t enjoy the books she nicked and — she assured me — God would always punish her by making a contact lens drop out of her eye within hours of the crime.

I wouldn’t enjoy a stolen book, either. But if I listened to classical recordings illicitly downloaded from the internet, would my conscience drain the music of colour? That’s easy to answer. As I type this article, a criminally underrated pianist is shooting C sharp minor rockets up the keyboard in the finale of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata — and I’m loving it. His arpeggios wouldn’t sound any crisper if I’d paid to hear them.