Arvo Pärt’s Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten opens the programme in a world of stillness and luminous restraint. Composed in 1977 as a tribute to a composer Pärt deeply admired, the Cantus emerges like a bell tolling through mist — a meditation on time, silence, and loss. Built on a single descending scale and resonant with spiritual gravity, it sets the tone for a concert exploring modernism’s quieter, more distilled voices.

Grażyna Bacewicz’s Symphony No. 3, completed in post-war Poland in 1952, contrasts Pärt’s austerity with compressed energy and vivid orchestral colour. Bacewicz, one of the 20th century’s most important female composers, here balances rigorous structure with rhythmic drive and emotional directness. The symphony is shaped by the tensions of its time, but never heavy; rather, it pulses with life and conviction.

The programme closes with Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 3, a work of classical poise and inward confidence. Moving away from the stormy romanticism of his earlier symphonies, Sibelius distils his musical language into something taut, clear, and uniquely his own. The Third is often described as a turning point — a quiet revolution — where grandeur gives way to purity, and the symphonic tradition is reimagined from within.

Three composers. Three soundworlds. One arc of clarity and transformation.