The first of five concerts celebrating 250 years since Beethoven’s birth gets right to the point with a landmark in Western music history. If the composer’s genius can be captured by just a single piece, it’s the indelible, incredible ‘Eroica’ – completed when he was just 33, written in honour of Napoleon (Beethoven later lost his nerve and deleted the dedication) and regularly voted the greatest symphony of all time.

It’s joined tonight by two relative rarities: ‘Opferlied’, an almost casually brilliant piece of choral writing, and extracts from ‘The Creatures of Prometheus’, Beethoven’s only full-length ballet.