Dimitry Shostakovich
Festive Overture
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Sir Charles Mackerras (Conductor)

Shostakovich is well known for his cold, bitter and often sarcastic music.

Living as an aritist under Stalin, he did of course have a lot to be bitter about.

Commissioned the year after Stalin's death, this is a work of unbridled optimism and good humour. It bears a much a greater resemblance to Elmer Bernstein's Magnificent Seven than it does to many of Shostakovich's earlier works.

It was commissioned for a concert celebrating the 1917 revolution, although it's significance as a political statement should not be overestimated. Shostakovich was far more interested in writing music than he was in being a good communist.

Maurice Ravel 

Piano Concerto in G
Abdel Rahman El Bacha (Paino)
Marc Soustrot (Conductor)

Ravel's best known foray into the world of Jazz was written in 1931. He'd just been on a tour of the US where he met George Gershwin.

Gershwin's revolutionary Rhapsody in Blue had been written just a few years, and was one of the first examples of Jazz piano in an orchestral setting.

Unlike much of Ravel's music, which can seem extremely intense and densely textured, the Piano Concerto in G is a joy to listen to.

If you liked this, you might like to explore some other music by Ravel, but you would probably also enjoy the music of Gershwin and Bernstein.

Jean Sibelius

Symphony No. 5
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
Ole Schmidt (Conductor)

His music combines many aspects of German late romanticism with the slavic influence of composers such as Tchaikovsky. This piece could easily regarded as the kind of symphony Mahler would have written if he could bear to write anything less than an hour long.

Like his homeland, Sibelius's music is often accused of being rather cold and unwelcoming. If nothing else dispels that myth, the jovial fifth symphony must do.

This piece is not short on drama, power or tension, but it is quite unashamedly optimistic.