Mahler thought of a symphony as a "world", containing as wide a range of images and allusions as possible. His Symphony No 1 begins in the world of the Romantic forest, and moves via the sound of the village band and the synagogue to an impassioned finale. Shostakovitch's Violin Concerto No 1 covers a similarly wide range of experience, and its third movement, in which the soloist's lament is accompanied by a slow timpani beat, is particularly haunting.

Viktoria Mullova, Philharmonia Orchestra, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen

Shostakovich Violin Concerto No 1
8.10 Twenty Minutes: Making It New
In the first of three programmes surveying the part played by literary magazines in the development of 20th-century writing, James Campbell looks at the pioneering of new work.
8.30 Mahler Symphony No 1

(A profile of Viktoria Mullova - Music: p19)