Book Tickets

Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83
Beethoven Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67

Pierre-Laurent Aimard piano
Marios Papadopoulos conductor

The Wall Street Journal has described pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard as ‘a brilliant musician and an extraordinary visionary.’ Aimard delivers Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2, whose ambition and complexity echo the scale of a full orchestral symphony: four movements instead of the usual three, the piano woven in as part of the orchestra. It sweeps between the serene and the tempestuous, with a songful solo cello opening the third movement. Brahms spent over two decades haunted by Beethoven’s shadow before completing his own First Symphony; five years later, this concerto finds him confidently free of that artistic paralysis. Then, the symphony in which Beethoven gave music its most famous motif. The epitome of his ‘heroic’ era, the Fifth is relentless, driving and tightly constructed, wringing an entire movement from that four-note rhythm. The finale bursts out of near-silence, bringing piccolo, contrabassoon and trombones into the symphonic fold.