LONDON — Backstage at the Royal Festival Hall, one of London’s grandest classical music venues, James Buckle, the bass trombonist for the Philharmonia Orchestra, braced himself to do something he’d never done before: play the familiar opening of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Trombone players usually spend most of the symphony waiting in silence at the back of the orchestra, ignored by the audience, only getting the chance to play in the piece’s final, euphoric movement