Violinist Leonidas Kavakos makes new discoveries with Brahms’s Violin Concerto, and Daniel Harding is our tour guide in Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony.
About this concert
The Brahms Violin Concerto is one of the most frequently performed in the repertoire. And yet, says violinist Leonidas Kavakos, ‘you always come across something new in the score that makes you think, I’ve never seen that before!’ Under the baton of Daniel Harding, the Greek star violinist shares with the listener the joy of these discoveries: in the warm lyricism of the first and especially the second movement, and in the spicy finale, which sounds even more Hungarian with Kavakos as soloist. Here, the nature lover Brahms sets off a dazzling display of virtuoso fireworks. ‘It’s hard work, that’s for sure,’ admits Kavakos.
And after all that hard work, how nice to catch our breath with Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, an inner journey brilliantly disguised as a landscape depicted in music, aptly nicknamed the ‘Pastoral’. After a brief thunderstorm, we greet the sun. In the score, Beethoven even specifies the types of bird he makes sing: quail, cuckoo and nightingale. Everyone outside! Daniel Harding is your guide.
Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, an inner journey brilliantly disguised as a landscape depicted in music.
