Steven Isserlis performs Haydn, Royal Festival Hall

The work of a young, up-and-coming composer is always revealing, but when that composer is Haydn, who would live into his eighties and write more than 100 symphonies and a dozen operas, a concerto written before around the age of 30 carries extra weight. And all the more so, since the Cello Concerto No 1 in C Major was lost for centuries.

Steven Isserlis performs the work, which only rediscovered in 1961 in Prague National Museum, in his concert with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, conducted by Adám Fischer.

The concerto was composed between 1761 and 1765 for Haydn's friend Joseph Franz Weigl, then principal cellist of Prince Nicolaus's Esterházy Orchestra, for which Haydn wrote many works. The Prince came to value his court composer highly, even paying for repairs when Haydn's house caught fire – twice.

The spirited piece is preceded at the concert in the Royal Festival Hall by Haydn's overture to his opera La Fedelta' Premiata ("Fidelity Rewarded"), written for the Esterhazys and first performed in 1781 to celebrate the opening of the new opera house on the estate: the previous one had also been destroyed by fire.

Beethoven's Symphony No 7 completes the programme. It was first performed in Vienna in 1813, in honour of wounded soldiers returned to the city, with the composer conducting. Unlike some late Beethoven works, the four-movement symphony with its ecstatic finale was an instant success. Film-lovers will recognise its use in The King's Speech.

It promises to be an evening of pure classicism, immaculately performed.