Last year Anita D’Attellis enchanted us with a programme of piano duets. This year, she returns with another colleague, pianist David Alexander (and an extra piano).

The Variations on the St Anthony Chorale (a melody erroneously attributed to Haydn) is better known as an orchestral work, but was originally written for two pianos and published by the composer in both versions. Brahms’s ingenious manipulation of the chorale is noteworthy even by his standards.

To mark our 40th season, we are featuring some new pieces and commissions in some of our programmes. Anita and David are giving the world première of a new piece by Graham Lynch, Sinfonias and Saltimbanques which was commissioned by Anita, making this a welcome second appearance of this composer’s music at Wallingford.

Stravinsky’s ballet, The Rite Of Spring, was first performed over a century ago. The riotous uproar that greeted its first stage performance with orchestra in Paris in 1913 has become one of the legends of music history, but the appearance of Stravinsky’s own, hardly less explosive version for two pianos, first performed by the composer and one Claude Debussy in the Summer of 1912 seemed to pass with little comment.