With five minutes to spare somewhere in the mix, we turned to Elly Ameling, soprano, and Rudolf Jansen, piano, for Schubert's "Suleika I," a golden oldie, if ever there was one. Bliss.

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Our red thread on June 6 was grand masters of the keyboard doubling as leaders of the band. Starting at the top with the new set of the Brahms Piano Concertos (ECM New Series 2021) András Schiff and the conductorless Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, we heard the opening Maestoso from the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15. This is repertoire beyond the usual ken of the original-instruments crowd, and the performance was accordingly startling: the orchestral palette unusually tangy, even raw, the textures counterintuitively contrapuntal. The press release references Arnold Schönberg, who called Brahms "the Progressive," even as he pointed to Brahms's immersion in Beethoven and Bach. Channeling his inner Marty McFly, Schiff hurtles back to the future, stripping away the accretions of "tradition" the better to show the music's prophetic qualities. Whether or not this is how you'll prefer your Brahms henceforth, it's an adventure.

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A drumroll, please, for the 24-year-old violinist Randall Goosby, whose debut album Roots (Decca) drops on June 25. We opened our May 30 show with three tracks:

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Who knew? In 1823, believe it or not, the American consul in Vienna approached Beethoven on behalf of the eight-year-old Handel and Haydn Society, in Boston, to commission an oratorio in English. What if, rather than breathing his last in 1827, Beethoven had lived, accepted the offer, and crossed the Atlantic in 1833 to compose a late masterwork? In the novel Mr. Beethoven, Paul Griffiths offers an answer.

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Drums and trumpets, please! From a dark year that has dragged like a decade, the Paris Opéra roars back with the world premiere of Marc-André Dalbavie's great adventure, Le Soulier de Satin (The Satin Slipper), set to a libretto by Raphaèle Fleury after the play by Paul Claudel (1868–1955). Bathed in a glow of Roman Catholic mysticism, Claudel's scenario poses the question: Can unconsummated passion light the way to salvation? The epic action unfurls amid the discoveries and conquests of Spain's Golden Age, as the 16th century bleeds into the 17th, occasionally even spiraling to the heavens. Deeds of derring-do jostle low comedy. Joseph Ratzinger—Pope Benedict XVI to you—is said to be a big fan.

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