Leonard Bernstein introduced himself as a soloist and conductor to the Viennese public as early as 1948 with Maurice Ravel’s jazzy, languid Piano Concerto in G Major; later, he went in search of Haydn’s sharp wit in that composer’s symphonies, and in Antonín Dvořák’s music he loved the melodious sweetness and rhythmic élan, both of which are on display in the Eighth Symphony in particularly opulent style. Yutaka Sado conducts a colourful programme in which the festively jubilant eruptions in all three works can be considered an act of reverence for Bernstein’s musicianship and pesonality. But the sentimental side won’t be neglected – in the dreamy slow movement of the Ravel concerto, for example, with its melancholy, floating melodicism unfurled by the young blind pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii. Or in the Adagio of Haydn’s 102nd Symphony, which is believed to have been written as a farewell gift to a girlfriend acquired in London. And to the full in the voluptuous sentimentality of Dvořák’s Eighth, in which light and dark, melancholy and carnival atmosphere interplay in a captivating way.