The Full Works Concert: Wednesday 4 February 2015, 8pm

Catherine Bott continues her look back at the 2014 Hall of Fame chart with some of the composers who had the most entries.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had the most entries in the 2014 Classic FM Hall of Fame - 21 in total, followed closely by Beethoven with 18. In joint third place were Bach and Tchaikovsky with 12 each, and joint fifth were Elgar and Brahms with 8 each. 

Seventh equal with seven works each were Sibelius and Vaughan Williams, and 10th equal with 6 works were John Williams, Wagner, Schubert, Shostakovich and Dvorak.

Tonight, Catherine Bott continues her look back at the 2014 chart with some of the composers who had the most entries.

The concert kicks off with Tchaikovsky's Capriccio Italien. Composed between January and May 1880, the work was inspired by a trip he took to Rome, during which he saw the Carnival. The work is full of Italian folk music and street songs and even uses at its opening a bugle call that the composer overheard played by a cavalry regiment outside his hotel.

In the spring of 1721, Bach was contemplating changing jobs and, after a chance meeting with the Margrave of Brandenburg, Bach sent him a set of six concertos that he had already written - possibly as a kind of audition. The Margrave appears to have completely ignored the gift and the set were discarded in his library until his death in 1734. They were found in the Brandenburg archives during the 19th century. Brandenburg Concerto No. 1, which we will hear tonight, is the only one with four movements, and prominently features the horns and oboes.

In terms of the music's character, Beethoven's Piano Concerto No.1 certainly seems more polite than, say, the Fourth, or the Emperor. Beethoven hadn’t yet decided to champion the idea of the piano and orchestra performing as one, in interweaving dialogue. Instead, there’s a respectful distance between the two; they exist very much as separate voices. That’s not to say the work is disappointing – just that it’s absolutely a product of its time. Quite simply, for this concerto to make sense, it could have been composed only within Beethoven’s early period.

Mozart's Symphony No.40 in G minor is sometimes referred to as the 'Great G minor symphony' to distinguish it from the 'Little G minor symphony'. It was written during an exceptionally productive period of just a few weeks in 1788, when Mozart also completed the 39th and 41st symphonies.

Peter Illich Tchaikovsky: Capriccio Italien
Yuri Temirkanov conducts the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No.1 in F major
Ashley Solomon conducts Florilegium

Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Concerto No.1 in C major
Howard Shelley directs the Orchestra of Opera North from the piano

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Symphony No.40 in G minor
Colin Davis conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden