In both cases they are pioneers in composition, but they are music-makers who make it so that everybody can feel the gestures. So put the end of the Beethoven with the start of the Stockhausen, and don’t put a break between them, and everybody will feel it’s the same family of thinkers.

Is there a particular way you try to play the Beethoven to bring out connections like these?

You always adapt your interpretation. Your interpretation is not something stuck, that you repeat forever. If you make a real program — as you can make a real exhibition, where you put together pieces of art that can enlighten each other — of course you will look at the pieces differently. It doesn’t mean that you are betraying yourself.

Drawing attention to “Beethoven the avant-gardist” raises the question of whether there is still an avant-garde in composition. As someone so in touch with new music, is there?

There are cultural contexts and moments in our history that are favorable for the avant-garde, and of course, consequently, moments when that is not the case. After the Renaissance you had Mannerism; after the phenomenal avant-garde of the start of the 20th century, you had the ’20s and the ’30s; after the ’50s and the ’60s, you have eras like ours that have been more comfortable. But it would be too easy to say, yes, we are too commercial; we are a period of neo-this, neo-that; there is nothing at all said that is interesting in the arts. Of course this is not true. It is more interesting than that; the era is quite complex.