Munich Philharmonic
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Performers
Munich Philharmonic
Zubin Mehta, Conductor Laureate
Yefim Bronfman, Piano
Program
ALL-BRAHMS PROGRAMPiano Concerto No. 2
Symphony No. 2
Encore:
DVOŘÁK Slavonic Dance in G Minor, Op. 46, No. 8
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission. Please note that there will be no late seating before intermission.At a Glance
Brahms’s symphonic works represent an ideal merging of emotion and intellect, form and content. In his own era, he was often regarded as too cerebral for large audiences but is now one of the most popular of all composers. This concert presents two of his most upbeat pieces. The Second Piano Concerto is a four-movement concerto with the ambition and length of a big symphony. It combines grandeur with intimacy, introspection with whimsy, passion with classical restraint, requiring spectacular technique from the soloist even though the piano writing is rarely virtuosic for its own sake. Many of Brahms’s signatures are apparent, including a complex first movement that presents a variety of ideas, a dance-like but melancholy scherzo, a slow movement that features a simple but gorgeous song, and a finale that unleashes a joyous succession of Romani themes in rondo form, recalling the finale of the Violin Concerto and Brahms’s various Hungarian and Romani dances. The Second Symphony is the most mellow and spontaneous of his four yet written with his characteristic formal rigor. The orchestration has a crystalline transparency we normally don’t associate with Brahms, and the brassy fourth movement is the composer’s most viscerally exciting finale.