Blue Skies

Bridge’s tone poem arose from his desire to escape to the country during the first months of the First World War. Steeped in delicious harmonies and very free rhythmically, it evokes the warmth of an English summer day with strings creating a haze against which wind instruments emerge and recede. Despite writing a great deal of music for solo piano, Ravel wrote only two piano concertos: his last major compositions before the onset of his tragic brain illness. The Concerto in G was a showcase for his remarkable virtuosity and compositional talents. It sparkles with energy and a sense of spontaneity drawing upon Basque and Spanish melodies, jazz riffs and even his childhood fascination with mechanical toys. Rachmaninov’s elegant, ingenious, and often surprising Third Symphony is more in concerto form than symphony. Thematic strands endlessly weave and overlap one another, bound together by a theme that recurs in various guises and transformations. This chant-like motto appears quietly at the very opening but before long, it bursts forth in loud, stern animation and a thunderous, celebratory conclusion: all dark thoughts banished.