Paper books are expensive to print, inventory, store and ship. "Imagine teachers being able to present their students with required reading materials for an entire semester, or [information] managers being able to distribute corporate documentation to hundreds of employees - but all in one book."The reading device producers also point to problems in the publishing industry that the low cost of producing and distributing e-books may remedy. These advantages, the companies argue, will dramatically change reading habits."Imagine the ability to have dozens of corporate documents, books and periodicals all within one slim, leather-bound book," SoftBook proclaims on its Web site. There are social benefits, too: the clear environmental advantage of saving paper; the ability to deliver books to schoolrooms containing only a phone line and a computer. They have optional large-type fonts, bookmarking, searching and annotating functions. Their backlit screens allow you to read them in bed without disturbing a sleeping partner. Still, they are quick to point out the advantages of e-books Reading devices can store many e-books at a time.

"The idea of reading a novel by Dickens from a screen is mad!" complained Auberon Waugh, editor of The Literary Review, on Newsnight.None of the reading device producers claim that they're replacing the look and feel of printed books. Readers share this scepticism, arguing that a book has a certain feel, a certain smell - you can't crack the binding of a reading device, or fold its pages to mark your place. Commercial publishers can't imagine how to market e-books - books without covers, books that will never appear in Waterstone's - and they're nervous about selling electronic texts that may be copied and redistributed without permission. These texts have been posted on the Web, waiting for a convenient reading device to make them accessible.But it's only very recently that laptop technology and widespread Internet access have made the e-book a real possibility. Since 1971, volunteers at Project Gutenberg - a University of Illinois initiative to make as much public-domain literature as possible available as e-text - have been typing in books. Among the titles the literary agent Ed Victor was representing were books published by Online Originals, an Internet publisher. And Nuvomedia was on hand to demonstrate its Rocket eBook, a palm-sized electronic reading tablet that it claims will take reading and book-buying "one giant leap forward". The idea of the e-book isn't new.

It's been a staple of science fiction since the Forties, making appearances in Star Trek, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Knight Rider. But when the omission is made good with a melody of such beguiling beauty and sophistication, and the accumulative layers of orchestral dress are so cunningly plotted, no apology is needed. It's thrilling, too, watching players count the bars until their solos and then strutting their stuff while the others smile. At last, the conductor Andrew Davis could move his body a bit, and how the rest of us suppressed an urge to dance in the aisles, I don't know.The concert is broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Friday 16 October The last concert in the series is on Saturday 17 October.