Shostakovich's 10th Symphony received it's premiere from the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra under Yevgeny Mravinsky on 17 December 1953. However it had been written much earlier, with sketches for some of the material dating from 1946. To have published it earlier would have meant the gulag. To possibly quote Shostakovich in Solomon Volkov's book "Testimony": "I did depict Stalin in my next symphony, the Tenth. I wrote it right after Stalin's death and no one has yet guessed what the symphony is about. It's about Stalin and the Stalin years. The second part, the scherzo, is a musical portrait of Stalin, roughly speaking. Of course, there are many other things in it, but that's the basis". Wonderful electric performance.

Brahms 2nd Concerto is a masterpiece of four movements expanding over 45 minutes. I had forgotten how wonderful it is, with that "Brahmsian" theme in the last movement. Written in 1878-1881, a gap of 22 years since his first concerto it was dedicated to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen. Premiered by the Budapest Philharmonic in November 1881 it was an immediate success.

Samy Moussa's 2nd Symphony was very much like the wonderful music of John Adams - part of it could even have slotted unobtrusively into "Nixon in China". Composer and conductor Moussa was born in MontréaI in 1986, and is Artist in Residence of the Toronto Symphony orchestra. I enjoyed it very much, as I did the other two works - the wonderful aggressive "7 beats to a bar" Shostakovitch 2nd Piano Concerto and the concert version of the Firebird. This was the Proms debut of 36 year old New Zealand conductor Gemma New.