The first concert in a complete cycle of Beethoven’s piano concertos marking the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

Beethoven’s personal life was famously wild and tortured, from his wretched childhood and early musical education at the hands of an alcoholic and abusive father to his hopeless, unrequited romantic passions. Yet from personal chaos emerged perhaps the greatest music ever composed. Written for the instrument with which he is inextricably linked, the five piano concertos chart the dramatic period of Beethoven’s career from young composer-performer to the early stages of his painful descent into profound deafness, and the cruel end of his own performing career. Each is a sublime masterpiece, distilling the spirit and towering genius of this most prodigious composer.

Beethoven’s Piano Concertos are presented in this series together with the last ten symphonies of his near-contemporary Mozart.

6.45pm: Pre-concert talk

by John Suchet, the acclaimed broadcaster and author of Beethoven: the Man Revealed (for concert ticket holders only)