Programme Guide

The Second Piano Concerto in B flat major is chronologically actually No. 1 and was Beethoven’s first large-scale orchestral work. The style is still restrained, and is influenced by Haydn and Mozart. It is therefore all the more overwhelming when the bombshell hits, so to speak: when daring harmonic turns and unexpected energetic gestures reveal the composer’s creativity. The development of this style can be found in the Third Piano Concerto. Even the key of C minor points to the “heroic” Beethoven as we know him from pieces such as his Fifth Symphony.

The second work on the programme was a premiere: Sibelius’s Third Symphony, which had never before been performed by the Philharmoniker. The piece marks a turning point in the composer’s creative activity. It has indeed the unmistakably Nordic timbre typical of Sibelius. However, in contrast to its sumptuous late-Romantic predecessors, this Symphony comes across as purified and concentrated: modernism is entering the composer’s field of view.