Gossec, Saint-Saëns & Beethoven

Vive la révolution! François-Xavier Roth conducts Beethoven’s Eroica symphony, and Bertrand Chamayou brings a very personal perspective to Saint-Saën’s exuberant Second Piano Concerto.

Every revolution has its roots. The two explosive chords that open Beethoven’s Eroica symphony shook classical music to its foundations. For François-Xavier Roth, though, no artist operates in a vacuum, and tonight he places Beethoven’s era-defining masterpiece alongside the strikingly original music of one of his contemporaries from revolutionary France: François-Joseph Gossec.

It’s a fascinating rediscovery - exactly what we’ve come to expect from a conductor as adventurous as Roth. Saint-Saëns’s Second Piano Concerto, on the other hand, needs no introduction: this is the one that begins (or so they say) in church and ends at the Moulin Rouge, and you’ll be humming its second movement all week. In the hands of the ‘simply formidable’ (The Guardian) Bertrand Chamayou, it’ll fizz like champagne, premier cru.