Paavo Järvi and Igor Levit perform Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5

A work that “really makes you happy”: that is how Igor Levit described Beethoven’s brilliant E flat major Piano Concerto, in which – amid the tension between individual and collective – the orchestra and solo part combine to form an integral whole. In contrast, sections of Prokofiev’s E flat minor Symphony are supposed to sound like “wind sweeping over a churchyard”. The slow middle movement alternates between aggressiveness and lament, while rhythmic interjections in the finale symbolize – in the words of the composer – “the forces of evil”. E flat major versus E flat minor: both works are in good hands with Paavo Järvi.