Korean American conductor Holly Hyun Choe and cellist Luka Coetzee winner of prestigious international competitions such as the renowned Pablo Casals Prize and a celebrated soloist on European stages— nvite us on a journey where classicism, lyricism, and thoughtful modernity converge. Inspired by Mozart at the height of his maturity still influenced by the *Don Giovanni* he had just completed this program opens with the Concerto for String Orchestra by Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz. Composed in 1948, this work marked by clear counterpoint and striking rhythmic energy is rooted in a neoclassicism of rare intensity that ranks the composer among the major figures of her time. Dmitri Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto No. 1 is more introspective. The composer’s incisive writing unfolds with taut lines, in which the cello oscillates between a rugged melancholy and flashes of irony. The full ambiguity of this score is revealed here by turns incisive and meditative until the relentless coda that closes the work in on itself like a trap.