Lorenza Borrani, London Chamber Orchestra

This programme brings chamber music to the symphonic concert, breaking down the barriers between Beethoven’s composing styles.

From early in his career, Beethoven made the piano trio very much his own. The youthful ‘Kakadu’ Variations show his genius for taking a banal melody (which translates as ‘I am Kakadu the tailor’) and sending it up with a sequence of brilliant variations. Beethoven took things a stage further when he pitted a piano trio against an orchestra in his ‘Triple’ Concerto. He deftly solves the essential imbalance of the three instruments by ensuring the cello has a starring role.

From a couple of years later, Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony finds him at his most delectably Haydnesque and was appositely summed up by Robert Schumann as ‘a slender Greek maiden between two Norse giants’.