Benjamin Grosvenor Performs Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4

‘What I have here accomplished, I will never achieve again.’ So wrote Camille Saint-Saëns of his last – and greatest – symphony, a work full of melody, invention and sonic drama (not to mention a piano duet effect he liked so much he recycled it in The Carnival of the Animals). Just as the mighty ‘Organ’ Symphony rewrote the 19th-century musical rules, so Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 scandalised audiences some 80 years earlier, with its revolutionary opening and tender, slow-movement battle between soloist and orchestra – famously compared to Orpheus taming the Furies. Beethoven is also the inspiration for Unsuk Chin’s volatile Subito con forza, given its UK premiere here by Sir Mark Elder and the Halle.

*BBC co-commission