Program note

It’s a testament to the power of Bach’s music that this piece has been heard at weddings, in television advertisements, and in films and remains as beloved as ever in the concert hall.

Crespo drew on musical styles from baroque music to jazz and folk music as well as South American popular music and African American spirituals.

With its brooding fanfare of an opening and escalating dance-like energy, Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 is brilliantly suited to brass ensemble.

Bernstein fuses elements of jazz, Latin American music, 12-tone composition, popular music and European symphonic music.

“I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios…”

Written between the second and third symphonies, the Violin Concerto demonstrates just how successfully Sibelius managed to adapt the virtuoso vehicle to his own expressive needs.

A glint of light on the horizon. A first spot of rain. Clearing and creating space for something new, and a chance to reset at any moment. Possibility is an ever-present source.

Breadth and flowing lyricism immediately strike the attention in the memorable first subject. In fact, as with other memorable themes of his, it took Beethoven some effort to fashion its final form, which combines spontaneity and inevitability.

‘I was walking along one morning,’ Brahms said. ‘And as I came to this spot the sun shone out and with it this theme.’

Witold Lutosławski was one of the most significant voices in Polish music in the twentieth century.