It's all good and well to program lesser-known works and/or lesser-known composers, but the phrase "lesser-known" does a lot of heavy lifting. It's important to put context around WHY something or someone are lesser-known. Next time you come across that phrase, which of the following things does it mean?
1) someone who didn't have the means/connections of their peers
2) someone who wasn't white/male
3) someone who was awesome but existed at the same time as someone else who was more shiny
4) a work that was cool but not quite as cool as something else
5) a work by someone in groups 1-3
6) a work that kinda sucked and the composer probably wished it wasn't out in the wild
7) a work that had "tricky" instrumentation
8) a work for a particular occasion
9) a work that was too technically demanding to be worth the effort
10) a work that only the composer could love
11) something/someone outside of the western classical music tradition