Stairway to Heaven

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 timeles...