Two masterpieces born from intense longing and profound emotion – Grażyna Bacewicz’s fiery energy provides the perfect opening to the gripping, melancholic worlds of Britten and Rachmaninov.

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"For seventeen years, since I lost my country, I felt unable to compose. When I spent a summer on my estate in Russia, I rediscovered the pleasure of working. I still compose, but it no longer means the same to me,” Sergei Rachmaninov confided to the Daily Telegraph in an interview in 1933.

And yet, a few years later, he found a renewed creative breath. In his Third Symphony, he captures the longing for his homeland in music that is rich and deeply melancholic — firmly rooted in the Russian tradition, yet unmistakably shaped by the sounds of his new home in America.

First, Simone Lamsma performs what has since become her signature piece: Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto. “The work has an immense emotional power,” she said in Preludium. “Turbulence, sharpness, intensity, but also stillness. After an extraordinary climax in the coda, an overwhelming silence follows. The power and intensity of that silence at the end are unique. For me, this is the defining moment of the concerto.”