This set cuts pristine interpretations of Beethoven’s early symphonies with Gerald Barry’s 21st-century zesty homage…Stone’s Beethoven swaps between falsetto and lower-range passages with impressive dexterity…Adès and the Britten Sinfonia present tightly knit performances [of the Beethoven Symphonies], and dynamic subtleties are largely preserved in the concert recordings.

Despite their unrelenting manic energy, there’s a meticulousness to Adès’s accounts of Barry’s music that’s largely missing from his Beethoven...That said, the opening movement of the Eroica had me on the edge of my seat.

Quirky and touching in equal measure, Barry’s setting of Beethoven’s letter to his ‘Immortal Beloved’ has a similar madcap energy to the writing for Lady Bracknell (also written for low male voice) in the Irish composer’s marvellous chamber-opera The Importance of Being Earnest...Adès’s Beethoven, particularly the lightly-sprung Eroica, sounds fresh-minted without being self-consciously radical, and is the most striking orchestral contribution to this year’s anniversary celebrations that’s come my way.

The centrepiece of this set is, inevitably, Eroica. Adès approaches it with the sense of brisk clarity and lack of fuss that we have come to expect more from period instrument groups. This is chamber Beethoven, not lush grandeur, even if the orchestra is not particularly small. Barry’s Piano Concerto is really a rasping orchestral assault on which the solo piano commentates. His setting of three of Beethoven’s letters to his ‘immortal beloved’ is a scena that veers from complaints about the road from Vienna to Esterhazy to outpourings of unconsummated love.