Dancing dialogues and subtle tenderness are at the heart of this concert. Britten’s orchestral suite Matinées Musicales is based on the humorous and lively melodies of the Italian melodramatist Rossini, which Britten had already used for the scoring of the ballet film The Tocher in 1935. The element of dance can be found in both Britten’s suite and Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante such that both works were arranged for the ‹American Ballet› by the American choreographer George Balanchine in the 1940s.

The symphonic suite from Gloriana, commissioned to celebrate the coronation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, combines the rhythmic and the lyrical. The suite begins with tension-filled tournament music opening the opera, followed by an emphatic lute song and energetic court dances, before coming to an end with music from the opera’s epilogue.