In 2024, the award-winning, celebrated violinist James Ehnes released Sibelius: Works for Violin and Orchestra. This recording includes the composer’s only violin concerto, which Ehnes will also perform in this concert with the CSO. Conductor Keitaro Harada leads two American ensembles, the Savannah Philharmonic and the Dayton Philharmonic (as of the 2025-26 season), in addition to his role as the Permanent Conductor of the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra.
“A violinist in a class of his own.”
– The Times
Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony, dedicated to a wealthy patroness he befriended but never met, explores humankind’s tumultuous bond with fate. The introduction is one of the most memorable in orchestral music. The music drips with emotion throughout the piece, with sounds ranging from melancholy and despair to dreamlike and whimsical. The message in the symphony’s lively, unmistakably Russian finale, he wrote to his financier client, was: “If you find no cause for joy in yourself, look to others.” Even though you can’t escape your fate, it seems to say, you will find that life goes on anyway.