Performer: Paavo Järvi

A quartet of 20th-century French neoclassical works made for a joyful evening in Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. 

An early evening concert of Haydn and Beethoven with a light heart proved to be a tonic in this dark November lockdown. 

The Estonian conductor takes evident delight in conducting mercurial Ravel and Shostakovich; Mozart is harder to engage with in an empty Royal Albert Hall.

While Kalle Randalu proves an amiable soloist in the First Piano Concerto, it is Beethoven the firebrand who startles in Paavo Järvi's account of the First Symphony with the Tallinn Chamber Orchestra.

Igor Stravinsky once described Sergei Rachmaninov as "a six-and-a-half foot scowl". His Second Symphony – often a lugubrious affair – was here turned into something urgent and vital.