Los Angeles Philharmonic

Composed within a year of each other, the Third Piano Concerto and Symphony capture Beethoven on the precipice of a burgeoning Romantic era, forging a new musical language brimming with emotion and revolutionary ideals. Soloist Rudolf Buchbinder, a “paragon of the elegant Viennese style” (Los Angeles Times) and “a true Beethoven authority” (The Guardian), performs leg three of his piano concerto cycle, a melding of Mozartian grace with Romantic-era drama.

The program culminates with the Third Symphony, a revolutionary work written for a revolutionary time. Though he originally intended to name the symphony after Napoleon, Beethoven rescinded the title after Napoleon crowned himself emperor and called it “Eroica,” instead. This “heroic” work, brimming with emotion and Enlightenment ideals, continues to enthrall us more than 200 years later.