I first encountered Finnish conductor Jukka-Pekka Saraste as a strikingly tall, blond young man when he came to Hobart in the mid-eighties to conduct Sibelius, and it is a shock to realise that he is exactly the same age as I am!

Grieg and Sibelius was all Scandinavian conductors were allowed to conduct in those days.

Times have clearly changed, because here is a program of Stravinsky and Bartók with Croatian pianist Dejan Lazić making his debut with the MSO. Lazić is best-known for his many recordings for Channel Classics.

Stravinsky’s Funeral Song was written in 1908 just prior to tonight’s main work The Firebird. The funeral in question was Rimsky-Korsakov’s. The piece was lost until a couple of years ago when the parts were found in St Petersburg Conservatory and given its premiere by Valery Gergiev.

To my ears, it was no more funereal than most other Russian music, but certainly within the same sound world as The Firebird. That said, the overall character was rather on the sombre side, with some lovely horn solos, a folk-music flavour, and lots of chromatic rumblings in the strings. I think I detected a few last gasps of breath before the end. So, interesting rather...