Montreal Symphony and pianist Angela Hewitt lay out history of the symphony at Carnegie Hall

Montreal Symphony Orchestra music director Kent Nagano presented a programme he billed as the history of the symphony to close Carnegie Hall's Spring for Music festival this past Saturday. It would have been more appropriate to turn to Montreal playwright Michel Tremblay for the programme's title: The Symphony in Five Times.

We get Gabrielli, Bach, Beethoven,Webern and Stravinsky. Ok, more like The Symphony in Four Times.

Helping out was pianist Angela Hewitt, working her trademark magic with the music of J.S. Bach. It's a fine program, and a great antidote to the fourth straight day of rain in this normally more sunny part of the world.

You can hear it via National Public Radio, here.

Here's something not on the programme: Hewitt playing one of Wilhelm Kempff's excellent transcriptions of music by J.S. Bach. This Sicilienne has a wonderfully rain-droppy quality: