Work: Schelomo, Hebrew Rhapsody for cello

Bookending a concert with Die Seejungfrau and La Mer, Klaus Mäkelä and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra offered two very different musical depictions of water and the ocean.

Whoever curated last night’s BBC SO concert, conducted by Thomas Dausgaard, needs a medal. Not only were the pieces united by virtue of being composed at the same time during the dark years of the First World War, but also each composer seems to find something passionately troubled to say which reflected their vintage – an unusual combination of neglected works, two of which are masterpieces.

Dreams and anxieties, religious and otherwise, were the dominant themes at Thursday night’s New York Philharmonic performance. The concert program worked backwards in time, starting with Phantasmata by composer-in-residence Christopher Rouse (completed in 1985), followed by Ernest Bloch’s Schelomo (1916), and finishing with Brahms’ Symphony no. 1 (published in 1877).