Grieg鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 magical, cinematic evocation of an imaginary island idyll, thronged with migrating birds. Fans of Sibelius shouldn鈥檛 miss it.
