The NSO’s Conductor Laureate, the eminent Günther Herbig, loyally returns season after season for much-anticipated performances of music by German and Viennese masters. This year he comes with Beethoven and Bruckner for the first of his two programs here. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 marks a giant step in emotional depth and drama over the composer’s previous two works in the genre, as well as in the intricacy of interaction between soloist and orchestra. As the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven was his last, so too was the Ninth of Bruckner. Both are in D minor, both last over an hour, and both contain lofty grandeur, monumental blocks of sound, seismic eruptions, infinitely consoling melodies, fanfares, titanic harmonic clashes and apocalyptic visions that take us on a journey across an immense musical cosmos.