deFilharmonie . Philippe Herreweghe

Leif Ove Andsnes hardly needs any introduction. For his latest Beethoven performance this top Norwegian pianist sought Philippe Herreweghe's orchestral vision to help him tackle Beethoven's masterly Third Piano Concerto, the work with which this Viennese German once and for all gave the concert genre a new zest. The symphonically developed orchestral interventions, the overwhelming entry of the soloist, the dramatic momentum: this was the piano concerto with which Beethoven drew a line under all classical concertos and pointed in the direction Romanticism had to go. This despite the fact that at the disastrous first performance in 1803 it did not look as if the work would ever make history. The orchestra made a mess of it and 'because he had written hardly anything down, Beethoven played everything from memory'. The page-turner saw 'nothing but empty sheets, occasionally with something that looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics'. The dubious first performance of César Franck's celebrated Symphony (the Second) in 1889, the work with which this pianist and organist was to win a lasting place on the orchestral platform, was just as shaky. The combination of socially acceptable elegance and Wagnerian lyricism that Franck presented did not please the orchestra of the time. Two masterpieces with hesitant first performances, heralded by Mendelssohn's glorious 'Trumpet Overture'.