"Mendelssohn was not the first to create independent concert overtures," the musicologist R. Larry Todd writes, "but he was arguably the first major composer to probe extensively the ability of the autonomous overture to treat in purely musical terms programmatic ideas, whether of a dramatic, poetic, or pictorial nature." His achievement was to separate the overture "from its traditional role on the stage, and to free orchestral music from the conventions of the symphony." The influence of his overtures on later dramatic and programme music was incalculable.

Though undeniably vivid, full of drama and mystery and rough-hewn grandeur, the music has no explicit programme; there was not even any unanimity of title among the various manuscript and early published sources, which bore headings including The Hebrides, Fingal's Cave, Ossian in Fingal's Cave, Overture to the Isles of Fingal, and Overture to the Lonely Isle. Though probably influenced by Scottish literature (Ossian, Scott), it does not set a particular poem or play or other source; it seems to have been based largely on visual impressions (a fine draftsman, Mendelssohn made many drawings in Scotland). One can perhaps detect certain musical influences, too, like Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, and perhaps indigenous Scottish music (though Mendelssohn, admittedly, was never much interested in folk music). It is tempting to identify tone-painting here and there - winds and waves, caves and crags - though the music is really more impressionistic than programmatic. Mendelssohn seems to have been primarily interested in conveying the desolation of the Scottish islands: a few storms notwithstanding, the piece is mostly quiet. Set in a recognizable though hardly conventional sonata form (the recapitulation is much truncated), the music unfolds organically, through transformations a few interrelated ideas - particularly the famous motif with which it opens.

With its symphonic proportions, grand orchestration, and stormy, Romantic rhetoric, Beethoven's C-minor concerto was an important precursor of his "heroic" middle-period style, and its solo part demanded unprecedented power and virtuosity, an unprecedented range of colour and expression, from the pianist. (There are cadenzas in all three movements.) As Beethoven's biographer Maynard Solomon wrote, this was the first concerto to "record something far beyond merely exterior wit or refinement, and to move toward dramatic oratory."

The slow movement is luminous, and Beethoven writes "sempre con gran espressione" [always with great expression] at the little cadenza near the end (he never next left such instructions lightly). One hears an incipient Romanticism in his beautiful piano writing: textures that span the whole the range of the keyboard; sonorous, wide-spaced chords and lush arpeggios; evocative tremolos in the left hand; rich ornamentation and intricate melodic filigree. Beethoven is generous with pedal markings, too, some of which serve to blur harmonies into an impressionistic haze.

The finale at first revisits the bluster of the first movement, but gradually the drama lightens. Pleasant, lyrical, even flippant ideas appear, along with tender and tranquil episodes (one of which recalls the slow movement). The spirit of comedy ultimately prevails. Beethoven appends a faster, jaunty coda that features brilliant cascades from the piano, and he brings this most passionate of his early concertos to a close with raucous laughter.

Formally, the Symphony No. 9 adheres to Classical models, but the music is more leisurely than tightly argued; its breadth was unprecedented in its day. (Old joke: Schubert wrote two symphonies, one unfinished, the other endless.) Schumann used the phrase "heavenly length" to describe this music, and there is indeed an unusual wealth of incident throughout, as Schubert develops every idea at length with unflagging imagination. And he infuses Classical forms with Romantic melodies, instrumental colours, and expressive nuances.

The first movement opens with a long, slowish introduction with its own theme, set out by horns in the opening bars. The Allegro that follows is sunny and boisterous, though with some darkly Romantic undercurrents: its third principal theme (trombones) is ghostly, uncanny, and operatic- like something out of Der Freischütz. In a long, faster coda, Schubert fixates on his first theme, but closes with an inspired surprise: a blazing apotheosis of the horn theme from the introduction.

The slow movement is deeply expressive and profoundly Romantic, and, despite some tender and dreamy interludes, it ends on a forlorn note; its main theme, a somber march characterized by dotted rhythms and comprising several distinct ideas, has an unmistakable Hungarian flavour.

In the third movement, the main scherzo section unfolds in full sonata form; the principal theme is bustling and witty, later themes more elegant, urbane, waltz-like; the trio is homelier, like a country dance, though exquisitely scored. The massive finale, which begins with a call to arms, is busy and energetic; much of it generated by a seemingly simple motif from its first theme, and its long coda attains Beethovenian rhythmic and orchestral power.