Gardiner conducts Brahms

John Eliot Gardiner leads choral works and Symphony No. 3

image: Eduardus Lee

Sir John Eliot Gardiner juxtaposes Brahms’s choral works with the Third Symphony. Because in Brahms’s music, everything sings!

That freedom has a slight hint of melancholy to it, as can be heard most clearly in the poignant second movement.

Concert programme

  • Johannes Brahms

    Nänie

  • Johannes Brahms

    Vier Gesänge, op 17

  • Johannes Brahms

    Ich schwing mein Horn ins Jammertal

  • Johannes Brahms

    Fünf Gesänge, op. 104

  • -- interval --

  • Johannes Brahms

    Symphony no. 3

Performers

About this concert

Brahms was fourteen when he conducted his first choir – granted, it was a local male choir in a nearby pub, but still. The gentlemen even performed works by their young conductor. Brahms later founded his own women’s choir, thereby gaining invaluable experience as a conductor and composer. He chose rigorous Renaissance and Baroque composers as his models, yet dressed this tradition in an unmistakably Romantic guise.  

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra and his very own Monteverdi Choir, will illuminate Brahms’s learning trajectory as echoed in the Third Symphony. It opens with the catchy notes F–A-flat–F, a reference to Brahms’s own bachelor motto ‘frei aber froh’, or free yet happy. That freedom has a slight hint of melancholy to it, too, as can be heard most clearly in the poignant second movement. Cantabile!

Dates and tickets

About this concert

Brahms was fourteen when he conducted his first choir – granted, it was a local male choir in a nearby pub, but still. The gentlemen even performed works by their young conductor. Brahms later founded his own women’s choir, thereby gaining invaluable experience as a conductor and composer. He chose rigorous Renaissance and Baroque composers as his models, yet dressed this tradition in an unmistakably Romantic guise.  

Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra and his very own Monteverdi Choir, will illuminate Brahms’s learning trajectory as echoed in the Third Symphony. It opens with the catchy notes F–A-flat–F, a reference to Brahms’s own bachelor motto ‘frei aber froh’, or free yet happy. That freedom has a slight hint of melancholy to it, too, as can be heard most clearly in the poignant second movement. Cantabile!

A preview