That Mendelssohn wrote five symphonies is widely known, though I'd wager that 99% of listeners only know 40% of them. Begin with the rarely-played Symphony No. 1, written when Mendelssohn was 14.

That was chiefly the business of the four new works. Yeats’s “Stream and Sun at Glendalough” rippled and shone especially in composer Denise Ondishko’s fluid writing for piano. Finegan took centre ...