Duncan Ward conducts Bacewicz, Schreker, and Richard Strauss

Three tales from the 20th century: power, passion and pure beauty, in music by Bacewicz, Schreker, and Richard Strauss. What a difference half a century makes. Schreker wrote his sensuous, shimmering Chamber Symphony in the Vienna of Klimt and Freud. Grażyna Bacewicz, in post-war Poland, was working in a very different world, and writing music of uncompromising personality and power. Richard Strauss, meanwhile, remembered a happier age in what might be the greatest of all oboe concertos. Our soloist today is the LSO’s Principal Oboe, Juliana Koch – and with a scaled-down LSO conducted by Duncan Ward, it’ll feel as poignant as a piece of great chamber music. Strauss dedicated the concerto ‘to the spirit of the immortal Mozart’, and it’s the perfect foil both to Bacewicz’s punchy Music for Trumpet, Percussion and Strings, and Schreker’s gorgeous excess.