The concert programme brings together works that are both distinctive and unconventional, diverse in style and subject matter. Much of what unites them is the idea of musical illustration or extra-musical content, expressed through their titles and verbal commentary, and in one case even through visual elements.

Composed in 1793 – a year that proved momentous for the events portrayed – the cycle of piano miniatures The Sufferings of the French Queen by the Czech composer Jan Ladislav Dussek presents a fictionalised account of the tragic fate of Marie Antoinette, culminating in a musical apotheosis of the queen condemned to the guillotine. The ten scenes from the queen's life are narrated through the titles of the individual movements, as well as the programme notes incorporated into the score, including the climactic annotation, ‘The guillotine falls’, vividly rendered in a striking musical gesture.

A very different subject and atmosphere emerge in the work of the eccentric French composer Erik Satie. Composed in 1914, his cycle of twenty-one satirical piano miniatures, Sports et divertissements (Sports and Pastimes) – performed here in an arrangement for instrumental ensemble – transports the listener into the world of fashion magazines and advertising imagery, combining music with spoken text and illustrations originally included in the published score.

The piano miniature The Tawny Owl comes from Olivier Messiaen's celebrated Catalogue d'oiseaux (Catalogue of Birds) of 1958. One of the great French composers of the twentieth century and an avid ornithologist, Messiaen repeatedly drew on the birdsong he collected in his compositions. Yet this music is far removed from straightforward quotation, even though the titles refer to specific bird species.

The concert concludes with Leoš Janáček’s brilliant, rhythmically vibrant and richly coloured Concertino of 1925, written for piano and instrumental ensemble.

Robert Losiak