This winter night, we can hear two gloomy pieces striving for light with a plastically articulated  Romantic tone. Both compositions seem as if the otherwise optimistic and burgeoning composer had felt the need to formulate grimmer thoughts and multi-layered ideas. The then 25-year-old Grieg joined the populous camp of composers of piano concertos with youthful zeal, and his intimate and emotional piece soon became a favourite with the audience. Dohnányi's Symphony No. 2 was born in the soul of a master fleeing from the Russian front in World War II. We have an immensely gifted, diligent and witty man standing before us, who is forced to leave his home country and his audience in his later years and is deeply touched by the uncertainties of his people and his career. The symphony could be a movie soundtrack without a movie in some places. And at the end of this film, hope does triumph in one way or another. Although nearly a century passed between the two compositions – and Grieg had frequently been called old-fashioned, let alone Dohnányi –they both know how to speak to a 21st-century audience.