Brahms' extravagantly beautiful piano concerto is the most expansive work of its kind in the regular repertoire. Where Brahms thought of the symphony as a vessel for rigorous formal argument, he gave himself more room to be rhapsodic in his writing for solo instrument and orchestra, hence this concerto's wonderfully dreamy opening idea for the first horn and the magically serene Andante.

The best way to listen to Beethoven's Fifth may be to forget that it is a classic of Western art as imperishable as Michelangelo's David or a Rembrandt self-portrait, and to approach it as its early audiences must have done: as an unprecedentedly compressed fireball of expressive intensity.