Kansas City Symphony: Stern Conducts Sibelius November 20, 2009

Two major patriotic works surround an exciting world premiere. Avner Dorman's new piano concerto is preceded by Bela Bartok's homage to a great Hungarian patriot, the revolutionary Lajos Kossuth, who led an attempted revolution against Austria in 1848. The tone poem recalls the heroic sounds of Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra. The mighty Sibelius Symphony No. 2, written in 1899, has always been regarded as a coded hymn to the composer's beloved Finland, then under Russian domination.