The evening opens with Beethoven's Leonore Overture No. 3, Op. 72a. Composed for his one-and-only, much-revised opera Fidelio, the overture is one of four different versions. The fourth is usually performed for full-length productions of the opera, while the third, performed here, is the most popular and the most typically Beethovenian in style.

Tchaikovsky's 1878 Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35 is one of the most beloved concertos of the classical repertoire. It combines a classical three-movement structure with a Romantic ethos, and is performed here by American virtuoso Joshua Bell, nicknamed the "poet of the violin."

The concert closes with Sibelius's Symphony No. 5 in E-flat Major, Op. 82. Despite being written during one of the darkest times in European history—from 1914 to 1919—the symphony has an undeniably optimistic nature, which the composer himself admitted in his diary.