Orchestre des Champs-Elysées . Philippe Herreweghe

Philippe Herreweghe and the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées turn to the repertoire where they first shone, pre-Romantic and Romantic music. This concert kicks off with Haydn's First Cello Concerto, a work lost until 1961, when it turned up in the archives of Prague's National Museum. With this work, Haydn put the cello on the map as a solo instrument and upheld the classicist conventions of the concerto genre. Beethoven put those conventions severely to the test. For the Third Symphony, he drew inspiration from the heroic military feats of Napoleon Bonaparte. No less heroic, though, was what Beethoven himself was accomplishing. With this work, he wrote a symphony of unprecedented proportions and opened the door to the Romantic in music.