A week after accompanying Maurizio Pollini in Brahms, the Philharmonia Orchestra played with a still more mercurial pianist, Mikhail Pletnev, in the concerto which Felix Mendelssohn had composed in some haste while in Munich towards the end of his European tour of 1830-31. The piece was dedicated to the pianist Delphine von Schauroth – ‘very pretty’, noted the composer, but he declined the invitation of King Ludwig to marry her. Von Schauroth herself added some of the more overtly bombastic and virtuoso figuration to the solo part, but Mendelssohn gave the premiere that autumn.