The Bach work that opens this concert programme, his Fantasy and Fugue in C minor, owes its 20th-century orchestral arrangement to Richard Strauss’s failure to match the eagerness of Edward Elgar: the two of them had amicably agreed to divide up the task of transcribing the piece in 1920, but, upon finishing his part before Strauss had even started, Elgar ended up having to do it all himself. Tonight being performed by Antje Weithaas, Shostakovich’s Violin Concerto No. 2 (in C-sharp minor) – his last such work for any instrument – has always been enthusiastically received by the Concerto Budapest audience. The composer originally intended it as a 60th birthday present for David Oistrakh, except he got the year wrong, so the marvellous violinist instead received the gift upon turning 59. Another anecdote about an encounter between genius and forgivable human weaknesses relates to Brahms's First Symphony: upon having the obvious Ode to Joy quotation in the work pointed out to him, the often contemptuous composer replied, “The similarity is truly astounding, but what is even stranger is that any ass can hear it.”