The Hallé with Sir Mark Elder and Dame Imogen Cooper (piano)

Vaughan Williams’s multi-layered masterpiece for double string orchestra offers a visionary opening to our new season before a welcome visit to Nottingham by Dame Imogen Cooper. One of Britain’s most garlanded musicians, she spent her formative years studying in Paris with Jacques Février, a friend of Maurice Ravel, whose jazz-tinged Piano Concerto in G she performs in this concert. Ravel was partly inspired by having met George Gershwin when he toured America in 1928 and besides the brilliant dexterity of the piano writing, it’s a dazzling example of his ingenuity as an orchestrator, from the tender cor anglais solo in the sublime slow movement to the scurrying bassoon in its helter-skelter finale.

Sibelius’s Second Symphony enjoys such popularity today that it’s hard to appreciate how daringly unconventional it was when first penned by the composer in 1901. A trip to Italy provided the initial inspiration and there’s more than a tinge of its sunny climate amongst the Symphony’s Finnish folkloric elements. Amongst all of his output, it’s where we find Sibelius at his most overtly Romantic, not least in the majestic finale, as upbeat and radiant as he ever gets.

Free pre-concert talk, 6.20pm in the auditorium: Sir Mark Elder introduces the programme.