In 1848, when Schumann returned to this material to set it to music, he himself had endured several periods of psychological torment resulting from his undefined mental illness; these involved terrifying hallucinations. The composer was eager to advance in the field of German opera during this period, when he also wrote a novel musical adaptation of Goethe’s Faust ad his only actual opera, Genoveva.

Schumann’s Manfred exists in a hazy zone between opera and Singspiel (musical settings mixed with spoken word). He called it a “dramatic poem with music.” Franz Liszt led the premiere of the entire work in Weimar in 1852, but the Overture is the only part of the score that has found its way into the concert hall.

Set in a brooding minor key, the Overture gives a powerfully concentrated impression of Manfred’s harrowing inner world—the real source and substance of Byron’s minimal plot. Three chords set the stage for a slow, gloomy introduction that already depicts the hero’s angst and pain. This gives way to a faster main part built of contrasting elements. But the density and intricacy of the musical ideas intimate that much more lies beneath the surface. The biographer Martin Geck noted that Schumann’s writing here conveys Manfred’s “inner conflict between heroic bombast, his desire for love, and a sense of profound depression.” The motifs are “torn apart, expanded, and woven together again” in a way that mirrors Manfred’s “complex state of mind.” The Overture ends grimly, suggesting that the anti-hero Manfred remains without hope of redemption from his obsessions.

Such a varied range of activities is characteristic of this widely sought-after composer and performer. As lead guitarist of the indie-rock band The National, which his twin bother Aaron cofounded in 1999, Bryce Dessner has long commanded a loyal following. Born in Cincinnati in 1976 and based in Paris, Dessner writes chamber, vocal, and orchestral music and is currently a creative and artistic partner with the San Francisco Symphony under its new music director Esa-Pekka Salonen. His work is also well known among film enthusiasts. Dessner contributed to the Grammy-nominated score for the epic Western The Revenant (2015), directed by the Mexican filmmaker Alejandro G. Iñárritu.

Dessner has developed a signature style that fuses elements from the classical past as well as more popular idioms with some of the techniques of Minimalism, and Dessner has worked with Steve Reich (whom he credits as an artistic father figure) and Philip Glass. Some listeners may detect a touch of influence from John Adams in the Concerto for Two Pianos.

The idea for a concerto that doubles the soloist role resulted from Dessner’s positive experience collaborating with the renowned French piano duo Katia and Marielle Labèque, sisters who have played together since childhood. The composer encountered the pair while rehearsing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2014 for his orchestral piece Quilting, which Gustavo Dudamel premiered. Also on the bill was Philip Glass’s Double Concerto for Two Pianos (written for the Labèques).

“I became acquainted with their incredible playing and profoundly open and inspiring musical universe,” Dessner recalls. “I had also recently moved to Paris, and Katia and Marielle would quickly become a second family to me in France. Soon after that, we started planning our future collaboration, which materialized with my Concerto for Two Pianos.” Dessner began by addressing the issues involved in writing for two pianos with El Chan for piano duo alone (of almost the same duration as the Concerto), which was inspired by the Mexican landscape.

The Concerto opens with a rush of scalar energy that continues unabated until the pulse changes to introduce an introspective, four-note motif on the pianos that is intricately woven into the rest of the first movement. Overall, the three-movement piece navigates a delicate balance between these two attitudes—high, sparkling energy that presses forward and more inward-looking moments. Dessner skillfully uses tuned and metal percussion to illuminate his writing for the pianos. The second movement begins in soft mystery with a repeated single C-sharp, but its fragile sound world speeds into a groove and leads directly into the final movement, the lengthiest section.

Eventually, the music’s streams of perpetual motion and interlocking rhythms stop short for a series of sustained chords reminiscent of the opening of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto, later ornamented with figuration that sounds like a cousin to one of Messiaen’s bird calls. But this proves to be a kind of interlude, and the urgent pulse of the music returns with tidal force.

The Concerto for Two Pianos was composed in 2017, largely in the Labèques’ own piano studio in Paris and at their summer house on the Basque coast. Dessner’s score is both an homage to the duo’s personal musical history and intimately synchronized style—Dessner calls it a kind of “telepathy”—and an appealing contribution to this fascinating genre.

The relaxed lyricism of the Second Symphony (1877), for example, suggested parallels with Beethoven’s Pastoral to some. Meanwhile, the conductor Hans Richter, who led the Vienna Philharmonic in the premiere of the Third Symphony in December 1883, regarded this work as sharing a “heroic” quality similar to that of another Third, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

At the same time, Brahms had by now developed an unflappable sense of confidence in handling this complex genre. He traces a unique symphonic journey that might even be seen to subvert the legacy of the Beethovenian model. Despite Richter’s assessment, his Third Symphony can be interpreted as a remarkably anti-heroic score filled with unexpected moments of intimacy and ambiguity. Its trajectory casts doubt on the “heroic” paradigm of an unabashedly triumphant ending, coming to rest on a note of ethereal closure instead.

The work grabs our attention at once with three forceful chords, the last of which continues on with the sweeping main theme. Here, Brahms distills the elusive essence of the Third Symphony into few seconds, allowing the minor key already to intrude and add an element of tension before the theme itself has been heard. However “heroic” that theme may sound, it will later be voiced in more intimate guise, and—a real surprise—Brahms brings this movement to a close not with a resolute bang but in a mood of resignation.

The two middle movements reinforce a melancholy dimension to the work, contrasting C major in the Andante with C minor in the third movement, where Brahms opts for a delicate intermezzo in place of a scherzo. This major-minor pairing mirrors the duality from those opening seconds—an interplay of shadows. The major-minor dichotomy shapes the finale as well, which begins with a mysteriously winding theme in F minor played by the strings in unison. The second theme from the Andante eventually resurfaces, preparing the way for a return to the Third’s beginning in the coda. With a sense of inevitability, when that opening theme is heard again, it spirals gently downward in an understated leave-taking.