Where did Ludwig go wrong? Perhaps the programming was to blame.

Our cover feature this month goes back to 1808 to explore one of music’s greatest events. In a gruelling four-hour marathon, and in a freezing cold hall, Ludwig van Beethoven subjected a bemused Viennese public to four hours of contemporary music including two new symphonies and a new piano concerto. Reactions were, to say the least, mixed.

As usual for a Beethoven gig, many reviewers had to admit that the ideas simply flew too thick and fast for them to be able to make a considered judgement on what precisely they had heard. Of course, back then a writer couldn’t download the music onto their iPhone for a quick re-listen on the way home from the concert. No, they might have to wait several years for opportunity to come knocking again – and then fork out for another ticket!

So where did Ludwig go wrong? Perhaps the programming was to blame. If he’d only given them the shiny new Fifth Symphony and thrown in a couple of Mozart arias and a Haydn quartet he might have fared better with the critics.

It’s very different nowadays, when artistic planners enlist a host of marketeers, data analysts and subscriber survey results to tell them what goes down well and what is a proverbial box office lead balloon. A piece of new music is often regarded as a pill that must be sugar-coated to slip down the listener’s throat without too much protest. But some of our arts leaders are smarter than that. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s artistic chief David Robertson is a good case in point. Over the last few months he’s managed to pair Boulez with Debussy, Schumann with Jörg Widmann. He even had the brilliant audacity to offer Act Three of Wozzeck as a curtain raiser to Beethoven’s mighty Choral Symphony – a juxtaposition that, perhaps surprisingly, worked a treat and gave his audience plenty of food for thought as they trudged home post-concert.

All that is a preamble to say how excited I am that next month David has agreed to guest edit Limelight. It will be his words you read here, not mine, and his deft curatorial touch will be across all these pages. I hope you’ll enjoy the stimulating thoughts of one of classical music’s most inspirational thinkers.