Undoubtedly the leading Portuguese symphonist of the twentieth century, Joly Braga Santos was a gifted composer for the orchestra. His musical language is based on a strong sense of architecture as well as drama, with generous melodic lines and a natural instinct for structural development. In his own words, he wanted to contribute “toward a Latin symphonism and to react against the predominant tendency of the generation that preceded me to reject monumentalism in music”. One of Braga Santos’ last works, the Cello Concerto is more of a symphonic poem in which the cellist appears as soloist from time to time, than a traditional concerto. The luminous, extrovert Divertimento No. 1 is one of the composer’s few works based on Portuguese musical folklore while, by way of sharp contrast, the Divertimento No. 2 is a haunting, often dissonant work which utterly belies its title.