Wagner - Prelude and Liebestod, from Tristan und Isolde
Wagner composed Tristan und Isolde in the years 1857-59, then made some revisions between then and June 10, 1865, when the music drama was at last produced at the Court Opera in Munich, with Hans von Bülow conducting. The Prelude to Act I was performed in Prague as early as March 12, 1859, also under Bülow; Johann Strauss, the Waltz King, conducted the first performance of the Prelude and Liebestod in 1862, after the Vienna Opera had failed to stage the opera in that city. The National Symphony Orchestra first performed this two-part concert unit on March 17, 1932, under Hans Kindler, and presented it last on April 18, 19 and 20, 1996, Christoph Perick conducting.

Prelude - Tristan And Isolde, by Algernon Charles Swinburne
Fate, out of the deep sea's gloom,
When a man's heart's pride grows great,
And nought seems now to foredoom
Fate,
Fate, laden with fears in wait,
Draws close through the clouds that loom,
Till the soul see, all too late,
More dark than a dead world's tomb,
More high than the sheer dawn's gate,
More deep than the wide sea's womb,
Fate.

Grieg - Piano Concerto
Richard Cionco, Piano Soloist
The work is among Grieg's earliest important works, written by the 24 year old composer in 1868 in Søllerød, Denmark, during one of Grieg's visits there to benefit from the climate, being warmer than that of his native Norway. It is in three movements:
Allegro molto moderato (A minor)
Adagio (D flat major)
Allegro moderato molto e marcato (A minor → F major → A major)

Grieg's concerto is often compared to the Piano Concerto of Robert Schumann — it is in the same key, the opening descending flourish on the piano is similar, and the overall style is considered to be closer to Schumann than any other single composer. Grieg had heard Schumann's concerto played by Clara Schumann in Leipzig in 1858, and was greatly influenced by Schumann's style generally, having been taught the piano by Schumann's friend, Ernst Ferdinand Wenzel.

Tchaikovsky - Symphony #5
If Tchaikovsky's talent had been no better than his own assessment of himself, his music would have turned to dust a century ago, dismissed as the mediocre scribblings of a man with nothing to say, for such was his usual view of his own creations. Surviving letters and diaries attest that he rarely had faith in his own abilities. The composer's own words prove to modern observers his personal conviction that his finished compositions were worthless and future ones might never come to life.

In the spring of 1888, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother about a seemingly insurmountable dry spell. "Have I written myself out?" he laments. "No ideas, no inclination?" Even months later, once he had spent his summer vacation at work on a new symphony, he remained despondent, proclaiming to his patron, Madame Nadezhda von Meck, "There is something repellent about it ... This symphony will never please the public." But Tchaikovsky was wrong. That symphony, that "repellent" work, was his Fifth Symphony, today one of his most-performed compositions, an epic expression of musical energy and anxiety.

This was, for Tchaikovsky, his second consecutive symphony to be based on a central, programmatic theme, a theme that in both cases he imagined as representing Fate. Why the composer found the concept of Fate to be worthy of repeated musical exposition is a question best left to psychologists; musicologists content themselves with a study of how Tchaikovsky, having resolved for whatever reason to explore Fate, goes about that exploration.

In his Fourth Symphony, he chose a brass-and-bassoon motto of frightening intensity, like the sudden appearance of a formidable foe. By contrast, his Fifth Symphony is more evocative of the distant rumble of a funeral march, as the clarinets intone a low and somber theme. As the symphony progresses, the theme returns in various guises, sometimes wistful, at other times imposing, but the general motion is toward an increasing mood of optimism, until, in the finale, Tchaikovsky transforms his Fate theme into a triumphal march. This, one feels, is how life truly should be: Fate yielding to mankind's yearning for a happy ending.