One of the choicest offerings thus far this celebratory Beethoven year is the powerfully compelling collaboration of Kristian Bezuidenhout and Pablo Heras-Casado with the Freiburger Barockorchester in the Second and Fifth Piano Concertos. Bezuidenhout has a long, fruitful relationship with Freiburg (you can hear them in a live Mozart K453 on YouTube.) Add to the mix the lively imagination of Heras-Casado, the Freiburgers playing their hearts out, plus expert sound as clean as you’re likely to come across in 2020, and you have the makings of a hot recording.

Bezuidenhout plays a replica of an 1824 Graf, built by Rodney Regier in 1989. For the Emperor, the orchestra use eight first and seven second violins, five violas, four cellos and three double basses, plus pairs of winds; for Op 19 one player fewer in each string section, minus a flute, trumpets, and timpani. It might be tempting to say the instruments don’t matter, so robustly dynamic is the music-making. But of course the use of original instruments informs everything they do. Tempos are decidedly brisk, without ever seeming rushed. Their sound is big, bold and simply luminous in its detailed richness.

Listeners familiar with Bezuidenhout’s solo Mozart recordings (2010 16) or his Beethoven sonatas with Viktoria Mullova (Onyx, 9/10) may have some inkling of what’s in store. Certainly discerning intelligence and imagination, qualities we’ve come to expect from Bezuidenhout, are here in abundance. But other attributes – his playful sense of the improvisatory, his ready ear for humour, not to mention his ability to imbue every gesture with emotional authenticity – seem particularly suited to the concertos: Beethoven, after all, often played their premieres before he’d had time to completely write out the solo part.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing quite like the company of like-minded individuals. In addition to creating sounds of startling beauty – the entrance of the horns at the end of the cadenza in the Emperor! – Heras-Casado and the orchestra seem intent on letting Beethoven be Beethoven. Rhythmic displacements, explosive sforzandos, disarming dynamic contrasts and pleading sincerity juxtaposed with brutally emphatic insistence create a sense of the astonishment and delight that Viennese audiences, accustomed to Haydn, Mozart, Salieri and Gluck, must have experienced hearing Beethoven for the first time.

In the aggregate, careful and conscious consideration of every detail of these brilliant scores paradoxically leaves the impression of complete surrender and abandon to the spirit of the music. I doubt that Beethoven, at least recently, has sounded quite so original or so much fun.

And what could possibly be better? Well, turns out this is but the first instalment of a concerto cycle. The Fourth Concerto, along with overtures, is scheduled for release in August; the Choral Fantasy and the Ninth Symphony for September; and the First and Third Concertos are due in late 2021. I can’t wait.