Stairway to Heaven

About

Beethoven wrote his Fifth Piano Concerto, ‘Emperor’ to the accompaniment of gunfire, as Napoleon and his troops were storming Vienna. You can hear the battle between soloist and orchestra – heroic stuff indeed and audiences had never heard anything like it in terms of scope and grandeur. But then, Beethoven liked shock tactics; they splatter his music. Later we move from the shocking to the sublime, as Beethoven’s slow movement is utterly timeless. Bruckner stops all the clocks with a sound world that’s mindful and mysterious. The skies open on the Seventh Symphony as shimmering strings transport us up the celestial ladders of Bruckner’s world.