When Christoph von Dohnányi conducted this concert with the musicians of the Lübeck Opera, the Dances of Galánta were barely a quarter of a century old; indeed the conductor himself was only four years of age when Zoltán Kodály fulfilled a commission from the Budapest Philharmonic Society with a vibrantly colourful set of orchestral dances in a vernacular style which arranged rather than invented folk tunes of the kind also used by Dohnányi’s uncle, the composer Ernő. The Dances were followed by Haydn’s D major Cello Concerto – at this time, the more authentic surviving Concerto in C was barely known – with the soloist Gerhard Mantel, who was the principal cellist of the West German Radio orchestra in Cologne and a pupil of Pierre Fournier and Paul Tortelier.