HEROIC CELLO

The Sinfonia Concertante was to be Sergei Prokofiev’s last major work. Despite its name, it is a fully-fledged cello concerto, the technical challenges of which reach to the limits of human understanding and sometimes beyond – it was, after all, commissioned specifically for the 20th-century super-virtuoso Mstislav Rostropovich. What is perhaps the most daunting benchmark in the cello repertoire is played by Andreas Brantelid, who last performed at Sibelius Hall in 2007 after winning the Paolo Cello Competition.

The pianist and composer Sergei Rachmaninov rose to prominence among the great composers of the century with his epic grandeur and works full of rapid mood shifts. Rachmaninov’s most famous work that does not involve a piano is undoubtedly his Second Symphony, whose waves of string melodies, stretching into infinity, draw the listener in with their heart-rending themes.