Both can be described as absolute shooting stars. The Finn Santtu-Matias Rouvali has been chief conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra since 2021. And it was precisely in that year that Canadian Bruce Liu's world career began with his victory at the Warsaw Chopin Competition.

Two Russian classics are now on the program. Bruce Liu plays Sergei Rachmaninov's 2nd Piano Concerto, the 2nd movement of which would melt Marilyn Monroe in the 1955 classic film "The Darned 7th Year." After that, even Shostakovich's 10th Symphony has a light Tchaikovsky melody. He had composed the work in 1953 and thus in the year of Stalin's death - and whose "terrible face" he immortalized even in the 2nd movement, according to Shostakovich's son Maxim.