Composed to acknowledge an honorary degree despite not attending university, a mischievous Brahms penned the tongue-in-cheek Academic Festival Overture, featuring boisterous student drinking songs. Del Águila's Concierto en Tango for Cell and Orchestra is a modern take on the traditional form, light-hearted and rhythmic. The forced optimism of Symphony No. 5, glorifying Stalin's regime, proved both career- and lifesaving for Shostakovich.

Four notes instantly recognizable across generations welcome back the much-loved Symphony No. 5 to the Kleinhans stage. Dance Symphony's rhythmic jazz motifs were drawn from an evocative Copland ballet about a morbid conjurer who could raise the dead and make them dance. Beethoven expands on Mozart's influence in his Piano Concerto No. 1, featuring challenging key changes and bold harmonies.