The evening opens with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Symphony No. 38 in D major, K. 504, known as ‘Prague’: it was completed on 6 December 1786 (this is easily ascertainable as Mozart, during his mature years, kept a complete catalogue of his own works, in which he included this symphony and dated it precisely) and owes its name to the city in which it was first performed on 19 January of the following year. Igor Stravinsky's Pulcinella concert suite follows: just as L'Oiseau de feu and the Sacre du primtemps were born out of the collaboration between the composer and Sergei Pavlovič Djagilev, the founder of the ‘Ballets Russes’, the idea to compose Pulcinella also arose out of the relationship between the latter and Stravinsky in the spring of 1919. In fact, Djagilev had discovered several manuscripts of Pergolesi's unfinished music at the Naples Conservatory and, having returned to Paris, proposed to the composer that he examine that music in order to re-orchestrate it and possibly make a ballet of it.

Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms for Choir and Orchestra, also by Stravinsky, closes the concert. In 1930, conductor Sergei Kusevickij, who had been leading the Boston Symphony Orchestra for many years, asked Stravinsky to compose a symphony for the orchestral ensemble's 50th anniversary celebrations. The musician accepted the invitation almost immediately, as he had been thinking about writing a ‘major’ symphonic score for quite some time: the work is divided into three parts based on verses 13 and 14 of the XXXVIII psalm, verses 2, 3 4 of the XXXIX psalm and the entire Psalm CL of the Old Testament Book of Psalms, respectively. 

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Symphony No. 38 in D major K. 504, Prague

Igor Stravinskij
Pulcinella, concert suite 
Symphony of Psalms for chorus and orchestra