Ryan Bancroft

Written against the backdrop of the First World War, Carl Nielsen’s Fourth Symphony shifts between turbulent and triumphant as two sets of timpani, winds, and strings wage an internal conflict that ends with the universal truth that the composer described as “music is life, and like life, it is inextinguishable.” Los Angeles-native Ryan Bancroft leads the LA Phil in Nielsen’s primal and spirited symphony as well as Anders Hillborg’s Sound Atlas that channels otherworldly sounds like a glass harmonica to create snowy, crystalline landscapes. South Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son brings “elegance and clean, sharply chiseled” sensibility to Mozart that the Vancouver Sun describes as both thoroughly modern but “very much in the spirit of Mozart’s era.” She joins the LA Phil for Mozart’s dramatic and rollicking Concerto No. 24.