Despite further evidence of a new normal, extreme climate this summer that caused unprecedented concert cancellations and occasionally unfortunate, inhospitable conditions at the outdoor venue, I managed to make it to a fair number of events, all good, but none as good as this one, in part because of the first Grant Park Orchestra performance of a work by a composer previously unknown to me.

I went in assuming I was biding my time waiting for Sir Stephen Hough to entertain the audience with Mendelssohn’s concerto No. 1 in G Minor, as he did with great skill, when I was treated to six wonderful movements from Foreign Lands by the little-known Moritz Moszkowski, and to a picture of his magnificent mustache in the program.

By the time the evening rolled around to the last composition, after an encore by Hough, I thought my musical appetite might already be satiated, but I was able to find room for a delicious dessert of Les Preludes by Liszt.