Classical piano solo—Your one favorite performance and recording

How about if I duly proclaim some absolute, incontrovertible boundaries for the various periods of what I shall refer to as Serious Music? To be sure, actual historical dates cannot be accurately ascertained but the composers who introduced the various Serious Musical periods are THUS --

Monteverdi shall be the first composer whose music supplants Medieval music for Baroque.

Haydn shall be the composer who supplants Baroque Music with Classical.

Beethoven shall be the composer who supplants Classical Music with Romantic Music.

Stravinsky is entirely, unequivocally responsible for introducing Modern.Classical Music.

And, oh yeah -- Chuck Berry invents Rock & Roll.

Impossible to choose one, but I'll put in a good word for Clifford Curzon's Eroica Variations.

@edcyn 

And, oh yeah -- Chuck Berry invents Rock & Roll.

No, Chuck Berry received a call from his cousin (Marvin?) who was listening to a guitar experience by Marty McFly.

This is well portrayed in the movie Back to the Future.  Get it right.

I remember being surprised when I read a book on Music Appreciation that lumped Beethoven and Schubert together as belonging to the Classical Period but being transitional figures, paving the way for early Romanticism 

There's a rather good movie out there called Eroica, made by Simon Cellan Jones.  As you might suspect, it features among other things a performance of that symphony.  For those just starting out with classical music, it demonstrates very well, I think, the nature of the transition between the Classical and Romantic periods.