With Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony on the programme there seems no obvious reason why it should not be, especially as there is a Mozart piano concerto too, albeit a less over-exposed one, No 15, but arguably the most technically demanding of the lot.

Written "to make the performer sweat," wrote Mozart, it comes from his 'piano concerto year,' and was the second of six he penned in 1784.

The soloist in Sheffield is the young German virtuoso Martin Helmchen and he can be sure of support from the podium as the conductor is Hans Graf, music director of the Mozarteum Orchestra in Salzburg for 10 years from 1984.

Austrian-born Graf, who guest-conducts major orchestras around the world, wasn't all that keen on music until his teenage years. Converted, he eventually trained as a conductor in Graz, Italy and Russia (with Arvid Yansons), before winning the Karl Böhm Competition in 1979.

Since 2001 he has been music director of the Houston Symphony Orchestra and in 2004 his contract was extended to end of the orchestra's 2009 season.

They didn't wait and further extended it in July 2007 and it now takes him to the end of 2012. Clearly his incumbency is highly successful with the orchestra, whose previous music directors in last 50 years have included Fricsay and Beecham briefly, Stokowski, Barbirolli and Previn.

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