Grumpy Commuters on a Cold Morning Train. Then a Man in a Dark Coat Started to Play

It was a grey, chilly morning in Copenhagen in the spring of 2012.

The metro was full of people on their way to work. Heads down. Coats buttoned up. Headphones in. Nobody talking to anybody.

Then a man in a dark coat quietly lifted an instrument to his lips.

He started to play the first soft notes of “Morning Mood”, from Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt”. Almost everyone knows it, even if they don’t know its name. It is the music that sounds like the sun coming up.

A few passengers looked up. Some smiled, a little confused.

Then another instrument answered from further down the carriage. Then another. Then violins, violas and a cello, one after another. The musicians had been standing among the commuters the whole time, dressed just like everyone else.

They were members of the Copenhagen Phil, the city’s symphony orchestra, also known as the Zealand Symphony Orchestra. Together with the Danish radio station Radio Klassisk, they had decided to bring a little sunshine to an ordinary morning train.

Watch the faces. That is the real show.

An older woman in a scarf breaks into the biggest smile. A man who looked so tired a minute ago cannot stop grinning. Phones come out. People who had never met turn to each other and laugh.

For a few minutes, a crowded metro carriage turned into a concert hall.

When the last note ended, the passengers burst into applause. Then the doors opened, and everyone went back to their day, just a little lighter than before.

The orchestra posted the video online, and it has now been watched more than 14 million times. The same musicians later surprised travellers at Copenhagen Central Station with Ravel’s “Boléro”, and that one went around the world too.

Sometimes all it takes to change a whole morning is one person brave enough to start playing.

Would you love to hear this on your way to work? Tell us in the comments.