Double debut: both the Finnish conductor Hannu Lintu and the Canadian violinist Leila Josefowicz will perform with the Konzerthaus for the first time in a programme spanning the first third of the 20th century.

 The Finnish composer Jean Sibelius wrote his Fourth Symphony in 1910/11, and its dark shades have been interpreted either as a reference to the composer’s crises in health and artistic output or as a sensitive prophecy of the coming world catastrophe in 1914. The occasion for Alban Berg’s violin concerto “To the Memory of an Angel” is quite clear and private. Written in 1935, it was dedicated to Manon Gropius, daughter of Alma Mahler-Werfel and Walter Gropius, who died of polio that same year at the age of 18. The concert evening ends with a contrast. “Desirous of victories, It was victorious, It is triumphant!” wrote Alexander Scriabin in a poem for his large-scale 1908 orchestral work “Poème de l’extase”– which could hardly be more exuberant!