Expelled from the music conservatory for absenteeism, Lyadov's gifts later proved great enough for him to be readmitted. He was the one who was originally commissioned to compose The Firebird, but he was unwilling to complete it within a year. His outstanding abilities unmatched by his sense of industriousness, he left only a meagre oeuvre behind. Always living within his own fairy-tale world, Lyadov is now known for just three of his compositions. The Enchanted Lake evokes a legend from Kalevala, set by a pristine Russian lake in a land inhabited by fairies. One of the most tumultuous years in Russian history, 1917 was also one of the most prolific periods in the career of Prokofiev, who withdrew to the countryside to escape from the events. This was when he returned to his "pondering” melody, first sketched in 1915, that eventually grew into a violin concerto in three movements. Quite unusually, the concerto features two slow movements framing a fast one. After the fiasco of his First Symphony caused Rachmaninoff a serious breakdown, he ended up abandoning the genre for some twenty years. Then, upon finishing his Second Symphony, he needed yet another ten years to begin composing his third in the summer of 1935, in his chalet by Lake Lucerne. "Finished. Thanks be to God!” he wrote in the score a year later.

Presented by: Budapest Festival Orchestra