Alexander Shelley conducts Beethoven

This all-Beethoven programme opens with the dramatic Coriolan Overture. Based on the tale of banished Coriolanus, the Overture captures a series of stormy episodes. Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.5 (nicknamed the ‘Emperor’ by audiences), written only a few years after the suspenseful Overture, is one of the most energetic – and yet moving – piano masterpieces of its time, with beautiful melodies, varied textures and sheer flamboyance. The composer’s emphatic Symphony No.5, completed three years before the ‘Emperor’ Concerto, really needs no introduction other than its own: the motif that dominates the Symphony (made up of four notes) epitomises all that was brilliant about the Classical era and still dominates concert halls today, as it will tonight.