An evening for heroes! As we have come to expect, audience favorite Alexei Volodin takes on not one, but two piano concertos by Sergei Prokofiev.

That one hand can be as virtuosic as two is proved by Piano Concerto No. 4 (1931). Like Ravel’s Left Hand Concerto – also featured this season (April 3 with Anna Tsybuleva) – Prokofiev’s work was also commissioned for Paul Wittgenstein, the celebrated pianist who lost his right arm in World War I.

Twenty years before that commission, and just three years before the Great War would forever change the course of history and the lives of both Wittgenstein and Prokofiev, the young composer wrote his exuberant Piano Concerto No. 1. Radiating youthful energy, this dazzling 15-minute tour de force is performed and experienced in a single, breathless sweep.

Although Richard Strauss firmly denied it himself, his symphonic poem Ein Heldenleben is widely believed to be autobiographical. With more than 30 quotations from his other works (including Also Sprach Zarathustra, Till Eulenspiegel, Don Quixote, and others), this magnificent six-movement composition spins the tale of a still-anonymous hero. The orchestra is led by the aristocratic hand of Stanislav Kochanovsky (GB Opera Magazine).