It has been 40 years since the first CD recording by Joshua Bell, who was 18 at the time. The recording features Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields. He has since succeeded the legendary Neville Marriner as the ensemble’s Music Director and has performed the work countless times with this famous ensemble – always without a conductor.

After the interval, it is time for Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 2, which he wrote at his inspiring summer retreat at Lake Wörthersee: the melodies, the composer observed, flowed so freely there that one had to be careful “not to step on any of them.” So he wrote his Second Symphony with unusual speed and felt cheerful and at ease during that summer of 1877. To this day, both critics and audiences can still sense the pastoral atmosphere in the work.