All Beethoven with Kahane and Oundjian

BEETHOVENOctet in E-flat major, Op. 103BEETHOVENGrosse Fuge, Op. 133BEETHOVENPiano Concerto No. 4 in G major, Op. 58 Peter Oundjian, conductorJeffrey Kahane, piano For this special Wednesday performance, Music Director Peter Oundjian and former Music Director Jeffrey Kahane invite audiences into an in-the-round all Beethoven evening. In a rare mid-week Masterworks performance, Kahane lends a studied hand to Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto, one of the composer’s most poetic works. Opening not with orchestral force but with a solitary piano, the concerto subverts expectations from its opening bars, balancing intimacy with quiet grandeur. The first half spans Beethoven’s boundless imagination starting with the Octet in E-flat major, revealing a young composer already stretching Classical conventions. At the other extreme stands theGrosse Fuge, a work so radical that it baffled its first listeners and still sounds fiercely modern today. Dense, uncompromising, and electrifying; it is Beethoven at his most defiant. Seen up close, heard at arm’s length; this is an all-Beethoven evening you will not want to miss.