In Full Flight

Composed in 1941 and 1942, while he was living in Los Angeles, Stravinsky’s Danses Concertantes was originally conceived as concert music, though its title and spirited character invite movement. Commissioned by the Werner Janssen Orchestra, it unfolds as an abstract ballet expressing vivid motion and elegant wit. Stravinsky’s expert chamber orchestrations pulse with kinetic energy across five movements, bookended by playful marches. Expect contrapuntal clarity, clipped textures and instrumental characters that leap and swirl in a joyful athleticism.

Nielsen’s Flute Concerto (1926) was composed for Holger Gilbert-Jespersen and premiered in Paris to warm acclaim. With two contrasting movements, it blends structural logic and tonal clarity with charm and vivacity. Nielsen said, “The simplest is the hardest, the universal the most lasting … being brilliantly unique.” The concerto’s broad lyricism and scherzo-like interplay offer a sumptuous canvas for the featured soloist.

Australian composer Paul Stanhope’s Apollo, for wind octet and bongo, continues the thematic thread of homage and wonder. The title of the work is both a tribute to the Apollo Space Program and an homage to Stravinsky’s music, in particular the ‘Apollonian’ characteristics that so deeply occupied him, which prioritised restraint and order over the late-Romantic predilections for emotion and excess.

On 2 April 1800, an entrepreneurial young Beethoven hired the Imperial Court Theatre in Vienna to present a program of works and firmly establish himself as Ludwig-the-Composer to the Viennese public. His program included his Septet and pieces by Mozart and Haydn. However, the crown jewel of the program was his First Symphony, which to this day represents such a powerfully original statement of music that it makes the revolutionary achievements of his later symphonies seem inevitable.