Spanish conductor Juanjo Mena leads the first BSO performances of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Bernard Rands's Symphonic Fantasy, a BSO commission premiered by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra in summer 2020. Pianist Emanuel Ax is soloist in Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 17, one of the composer's most joyous piano concertos, which may have been written for and premiered (in June 1784) by his student Barbara Ployer. Johannes Brahms famously delayed completing and releasing his Symphony No. 1 to the world until he was in his forties. The work bears several deliberate nods to Beethoven but is fully Brahmsian in its spirit and effect.