Beethoven’s is not the only Fifth Symphony – this concert presents two others! American composer Christopher Rouse recalls that the first pieces of classical music he heard were Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Rouse’s Fifth Symphony contains many direct and indirect references to Beethoven’s, and was hailed as a “triumph” following its premiere by the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Jaap van Zweden in 2017. Prokofiev’s Fifth had an equally triumphant premiere in Moscow in 1945, when one critic described it as embodying the “glorification of the strength and beauty of the human spirit”.