I realise that these things are programmed years in advance, but it was perhaps unfortunate that Vladimir Ashkenazy’s Beethoven cycle was launched a mere two weeks after the Sydney Festival’s revelatory Anima Eterna Brugge romp through all nine symphonies on consecutive evenings. By contrast, Ashkenazy’s more piecemeal offering comes in two halves eight months apart. Where the Belgians chose to illuminate the sequential compositional advancements of music’s titanic innovator, the Sydney Symphony cycle merely looks like a lot of Beethoven. Not disastrous, given who the composer is, just not as interesting per se as Van Immerseel’s period odyssey. Having said that, Ashkenazy launched into his ‘cycle’ with spirited accounts of the First and the Eighth Symphonies that swept most of the doubts well and truly under the carpet for a thoroughly engaging hour or so.

Less of a farewell to the Classical and more of a hello to the Romantic, the SSO’s former Chief Conductor took a surprisingly magisterial view of the opening of the First. Strong on rhythmic development, the balance was perfect with modern woodwind comfortably cutting through a string section that sported twice the number of basses and several more violins than their period cousins. The SSO...