Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven

Live at the BBC Proms: BBC Philharmonic and Ben Gernon with groundbreaking symphonic masterpieces by Beethoven and Haydn. Elisabeth Brauss joins them for Mozart's intimate Piano Concerto No 23 in A (K 488).

Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London

Presented by Tom McKinney

Haydn: Symphony No 103 (Drumroll)
Mozart: Piano Concerto No 23 in A (K 488)

8.30

Interval: Laura Tunbridge, author of 'Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces', looks forward to Beethoven's Symphony No. 4 with Tom McKinney in a discussion about aspects of Beethoven revealed by his writings and by exploring a fundamental but often neglected facet of his music: its wit and playfulness.

Beethoven: Symphony No. 4

BBC Philharmonic
Elisabeth Brauss (piano)
Ben Gernon (conductor)

Drum roll please! The BBC Philharmonic returns to the Royal Albert Hall for the first time since August 2019 opening their concert of Classical masterpieces with Haydn's exuberant and life-affirming Symphony No 103, a work alert to the taste of Londoners in the 1790s and the 2020s. BBC New Generation Artist Elisabeth Brauss joins them for Mozart's intimate Piano Concerto No 23 (K 488) with its sunny outer movements enclosing a heartbreaking, melancholy adagio. Their concert ends with Beethoven's Fourth Symphony, a work that immediately opens a new chapter in symphonic writing with its dark, searching introduction giving way to an effervescent volcano of energy. Ben Gernon conducts.