Both Le Sacre du Printemps and Varèse's Amériques shake the listener to their core. These groundbreaking works flipped music history on its head, becoming pillars of the modernist repertoire.

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Igor Stravinsky led the way with Le Sacre. A lone oboe begins, the orchestra takes over slowly building up until suddenly—BAM! CRASH!—the rhythms explode into a wild, hypnotic pulse that makes you want to move.

Edgar Varèse cranked things up even more with Amériques, a percussive tour de force for a massive orchestra, with 14 percussionists. Its raw, seismic power was unmatched, sending shockwaves through the music world. Yet Varèse didn’t see himself as ahead of his time: “I’m on time, the people are behind.”

Conductor duo Ilan Volkov and Concertgebouw-Maker Tom De Cock, a percussionist himself, each take on one of these kindred compositions.