Responding to the music of Keith Burstein’s Symphony ‘Elixir’, critic David Sonin described the composer as “a contemporary master of tonality”. Burstein was encouraged by conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy to develop the work beyond its many-layered and dynamically driven first movement, which was  conceived as a Concerto for Orchestra. He added a second Adagio movement with its long soaring melody and polyphonic counter-themes,and gathered the disparate elements of these movements into a final scintillating dance. The Songs of Love and Solitude were written to compliment the symphony, their twelve fleeting visions implying hidden dramas which range in experience from tempestuous darkness to serenity and acceptance.