Beethoven Symphony No. 5

The evening

An exasperated Beethoven may have given up on his composition lessons from Haydn, but Eun Sun Kim makes her BBC Philharmonic debut in a programme that is wholly inspired by the Father of the Symphony.

Caroline Shaw wrote Entr’acte after hearing the Brentano Quartet play Haydn’s Op. 77 String Quartet No. 2. Building on a minuet and trio form, Shaw loves ‘the way some music (like the minuets of Op. 77) suddenly takes you to the other side of Alice’s looking glass, in a kind of absurd, subtle, Technicolour transition’. There’s also a full colour palette on display in Haydn’s First Cello Concerto. Harking back to Baroque concerto grosso form, the cello moves in and out of the limelight, though its star power is never in doubt whether picking up the plush opening orchestral theme or the breakneck bravura of the final movement.

Following Haydn’s object lesson in concerto form, Beethoven unfurls a classical masterclass of his own, beginning with that unmistakable four note motif.