My days of Beethoven Triple Concerto scepticism are now behind me, thanks to this breathtaking new recording by the powerhouse team of Faust-Queyras-Melnikov and the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra under Pablo Heras-Casado. It’s partly the sound world of the period instruments and how masterfully the soloists blend timbres and colours (thanks equally to the ‘stringy’ fortepiano and the non-vibrato strings). But it’s also the sense of untrammelled exploration and joviality that makes this, for me, the ultimate interpretation. The charm and wit with which all concerned inject the music make it more akin to a mini-opera buffa than a concerto; and I challenge anyone not to want to dance to the quasi-polonaise episode of the Rondo at 5'20". This even beats Helmchen & Co, never mind Karajan’s league of Russian gentlemen (Oistrakh, Rostropovich and Richter – EMI/Warner, 1/70). Recorded in two days in June 2020, as soon as travel bans were temporarily eased, and with the performers seated 1.5 metres apart, it almost seems that social distancing brought them closer together, such is the relish, spontaneity and inventiveness of the playing.

Pairing the Triple Concerto with one of the piano concertos or the Violin Concerto almost always plays to its disadvantage. Perhaps with a nod to their concerto-plus-trio Schumann series, Faust, Queyras and Melnikov have chosen the trio arrangement of the Second Symphony, bearing the same opus number. As the notes rightly point out, it’s unlikely that the transcription was by the composer himself – Ferdinand Ries, as confirmed by Czerny, is a far more probable candidate. In this form the orchestral colours may be missing, but the transparent texture allows for an unusually well-defined picture of the architecture and the lines, as well as opening up all sorts of new possibilities for individual display and ensemble dialogue. Suffice to say that Faust, Queyras and Melnikov (this time using his own 2014 instrument after Anton Walther, whereas for the Concerto he chooses an 1815 Viennese original) make as strong a case as you could imagine for this version as an independent worthwhile work. Evidently the anniversary year hasn’t exhausted the flow of remarkable new Beethoven discs.