In April, the NSO heads off again to Japan for another tour there. This time, as a bow in the direction of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the orchestra will perform, side by side, music by a Taiwanese composer ( Jiang Wen-Ye's Formosan Dance) and a Japanese (Yasushi Akutagawa's Musica per Orchestra Sinfonica). Jiang Wen-Ye is a particularly apt choice for this tour, as he spent many years in Japan. As a pre-tour offering to its Taiwanese audience, the orchestra presents these two works plus one by a German (Mendelssohn's ever-popular Violin Concerto), and one by a Finn (Sibelius' mighty Second Symphony, a work that always sends audiences home in a state of near rapture).