Andris Nelsons conducts Still, Strauss, and Bartók

In paying homage to Sibelius, the Threnody memorializes a figure whose music, though shaped decisively by his own Finnish identity, had itself attained the status of something like a “universal idiom” by 1965 (if popularity on global concert stages is any metric).

Strauss's Symphonic Fantasy on his earlier opera Die Frau ohne Schatten served several purposes: it was relatively brief, employed a smaller, more manageable orchestra, and contained music that was still unfamiliar enough to be novel.

So well loved is Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra in all parts of the world that it is hard now to imagine the hostility that greeted his music in the period between the wars, and the horror his music inspired both in concert audiences and in critics who should have known better.