The year 1901 saw major events taking place in the music world: Rachmaninoff completed his second piano concerto and Sibelius started work on his second symphony. Both works represented breakthroughs for their authors. The former helped the Russian composer to give up alcohol and come out of a depression caused by an unsuccessful première, while the latter brought Sibelius enormous acclaim all over Europe. Conducting this concert will be Dmitri Kitayenko, whose recordings of both composers' symphonies have won multiple awards. 'Marvellous, intense and boundlessly virtuosic,' is how one critic described South Korea's Yeol Eum Son. The Times, for its part, called the young pianist 'a model of clarity and fleetness'. All of these are attributes she will need to play Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto. The core idea for his second symphony came to Sibelius during a relaxed trip to Italy. This is the last work in which the composer is clearly paying tribute to classical forms and his illustrious predecessors, including Beethoven.