Did you know Strauss admired Mozart? The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra admires them both – and they’re a fan of Bartok, too.

Enjoy the music of these three composers whose careers spanned different countries and eras, but who remain united in their abilities to bring out the brightest colours of the orchestra.

You will often see Strauss and Mozart on the same concert program, partly because their music sounds so compatible when it’s played side by side. Mozart’s Oboe Concerto – here performed by Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s skilful Principal Oboe Johannes Grosso – is filled with a sunny energy to offset the beginning of your winter. Strauss’ waltzing Rosenkavalier Suite sounds just as warm and inspiring, and it stems from the love-fuelled comic opera he wrote in the early 1900s. Its story is set in Mozart’s own time and place, 18th Century Vienna.

The Rosenkavalier Suite in its orchestral form premiered in New York, 1944. It was there, just one year earlier, that Bartok started writing his Concerto for Orchestra. While the Mozart concerto places one solo instrument in the spotlight, Bartok takes a more democratic approach and gives each section of the orchestra the chance to shine. It’s solos for all.