Brahms’s Second Symphony with Fabio Luisi

Fabio Luisi conducts music by two leading German composers: Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 and Henze’s violin concerto Il Vitalino raddoppiato. Of his Symphony No. 2, Johannes Brahms wrote tongue-in-cheek to his publisher, ‘I have never written anything so sad, so minor; the score should be published with a black border.’ Melancholy is never very far away in Brahms’s music, but the near carefree Second Symphony did not earn itself the nickname ‘Pastoral’ for nothing. An exemplar of his symphonic mastery, the work gives free rein to scintillating, lively melodies.

Exuberantly melodious, too, is Il Vitalino raddoppiato by Hans Werner Henze, the pioneering composer born 100 years ago with whom the Concertgebouw Orchestra maintained a close relationship. The violinist Julia Fischer is centre stage in this lush, neo-Romantic look back on the Baroque period. The concert gets under way with music by the up-and-coming Danish composer Sophie Meyer, whose work Fleur de verre was inspired by the skeleton flower: transparent, fragile and proud.