JOHN WILLIAMS: CONCERTO

John Williams, the most successful Hollywood composer ever, here makes a detour into the world of concert music. But this tuba concerto, written for the centenary of the Boston Pops Orchestra, has deep roots in the world of adventure films. In the words of Simon Wildman, who gave the premiere, ‘I’ve always thought this concerto was like a long Superman étude. The writing really seems to suggest flying, action punches, and soul-searching at the fortress of solitude.’ The soloist is the Lahti Symphony Orchestra’s own superman Harri Lidsle.

The young Johannes Brahms was horrified by the prediction that he would become a great symphonist in the spirit of Beethoven. It took almost a quarter of a century before he dared to realise these hopes – and finally to transcend them. Brahms’s fourth and final symphony is a model of music that stimulates the brain, whose logic provides a satisfying symmetry and feeds an insatiable hunger for overwhelming emotion.