Grieg’s youthful piano concerto is a crowd-pleaser par excellence and with its famous opening, an outpouring of tunes, and a heart-stopping slow movement, it’s easy to see why. In the hands of the brilliant Garrick Ohlsson and conductor Hannu Lintu expect it to come up fresh as new paint.
To follow, another solid-gold classic: Brahms’s Fourth, a Rolls-Royce of a symphony, whose power and polish conceals a profound musical intelligence at work under its bonnet. And we open with Rautavaara’s magical, cinematic evocation of an imaginary island idyll, thronged with migrating birds. Fans of Sibelius shouldn’t miss it.
