Stephen Hough plays Beethoven and Sakari Oramo conducts Mahler’s First Symphony. Genius, pure and simple, from the BBC Symphony Orchestra. As a pianist, Ludwig van Beethoven held his listeners spellbound. That’s quite a common response to hearing Stephen Hough play, too. Profound insight meets jaw-dropping artistry whenever Hough plays the piano, and it’s hard to imagine a more compelling interpreter of Beethoven’s darkest piano concerto. And that’s just the first half. Then we’re off to the sunlit meadows and storm-swept vistas of Gustav Mahler’s epic First Symphony. Mahler wrote bigger symphonies; darker ones too. But he never wrote anything fresher or more passionate. This is the sound of young artist with big dreams and an even bigger imagination: a stirring climax to an evening brimming with poetry, drama and the sheer joy of creation.