‘Essentially it is a work for two orchestras – one live, one dead’ is how American composer and DJ Mason Bates, who wrote an opera about Steve Jobs, describes in a nutshell his composition Auditorium, first performed in San Francisco in 2016. The concept is linked to the composer’s newfound passion for Baroque instrumental music. It represents a kind of conversation between an orchestra playing live and an ensemble of early instruments 'captured’ on a remixed tape.

Edvard Grieg subjected his only completed Piano Concerto to a more traditional ‘remix’ several times. One of the great Romantic concertos, it was premiered in 1869, but the composer put the finishing touches to it in the early twentieth century, a few weeks before his death. Here the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra will be accompanied by eminent Italian pianist Federico Colli, winner of the Salzburg and Leeds competitions.

In addition to references to instrumental music of the Italian Baroque in Bates’s piece and to Norwegian folklore in Grieg’s composition, our programme will also include subtle allusions to traditional American jazz. These can be found in John Adams’s colourful symphonic fresco City Noir, in which the composer alludes to the cinematic, dreamlike aura of the city of Los Angeles in the post-war years.