Alice Ping Yee Ho’s Concerto for piano and orchestra is subtitled “Pictures from an Imaginary Exhibition” (a nod to Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition) and is inspired by paintings by contemporary artists Wesley Tongson and Christina Petrowska Quilico, who also performs the world première as the soloist. Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8, the final symphony he completed, is one of the great monuments of the symphonic repertoire. It opens in an atmosphere of extraordinary stillness and mystery—so profound that the music theorist Heinrich Schenker described it as “like the beginning of the world”—before unfolding into vast, sweeping musical landscapes of immense power and scale. In its final movement, Bruckner brings the entire symphony together in a remarkable way, recalling and transforming themes from earlier movements. The result is a deeply cohesive and deeply moving journey, culminating in one of the most powerful conclusions in all of orchestral music.

Kristian Alexander | conductor
Christina Petrowska Quilico | pianist
Mark Wigmore | host (Classical 96.3 FM)