The Full Works Concert - Tuesday 26 November 2013

A youthful concerto by Mendelssohn provides the exuberant climax to tonight's Concert.

Tonight's concert opens with Franz von Suppe's overture, Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna. Suppe was one of the founders of Viennese light operetta and this overture would have served as the curtain raiser for just such a production, quietening the house and setting the scene for the antics ahead. The overture was later given unusual prominence as the central piece in the Bugs Bunny cartoon, Baton Bunny.

Mozart's Piano Concertos are among his greatest works and No. 21 enjoys particular popularity. What's more, the composer gave the premiere of the concerto himself. He wrote it, aged 29, in 1785 - just six years before his untimely death. It is sometimes referred to as the Elvira Madigan, after a now otherwise long-forgotten film that used the work.

When Tchaikovsky wrote his Serenade for Strings, he intended the first movement to be an imitation of Mozart's style, and it was based on the form of a classical sonatina, with a slow introduction. The Serenade remains one of the late Romantic era's most definitive compositions. On the second page of the score, Tchaikovsky wrote, 'The larger number of players in the string orchestra, the more this shall be in accordance with the author's wishes.'

The Concerto for Violin and Piano in D minor was composed by Felix Mendelssohn (pictured) at the age of 14 and it's an extraordinary achievement. The sensitivity with which he balances two totally different instruments is the work of a master and no ordinary teenager. And not content to give the orchestra a passive accompanying role, he gives it some brilliant and beautiful passages.

Franz von Suppe: Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna – Overture
Herbert von Karajan conducts the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Piano Concerto No.21 in C major
Piano: Murray Perahia 
English Chamber Orchestra

Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky: Serenade for Strings
Neville Marriner conducts the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields

Felix Mendelssohn: Concerto for Violin and Piano in D minor
Violin: Richard Tognetti
Piano: Polina Leschenko
Australian Chamber Orchestra