Music is the food of love with two unchallenged masterpieces – Brahms’s Violin Concerto and Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony – and inspiration from Shakespeare.
Did Tchaikovsky really call Brahms a “giftless bastard”? Yes, and worse. But the two men got on well enough when they eventually met, and they agreed on one thing: neither really liked the finale of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony! Tchaikovsky was bothered that its brilliant optimism would sound false, but audiences knew better – and we still do.
Brahms and Tchaikovsky come together in this program with masterpieces that are absolutely unchallenged in the affections of music-lovers. Brahms’s Violin Concerto reveals all the elegance of his mature style – noble, rhapsodic, and dazzling too. This is the vehicle for the gifted young Taiwanese-Australian violinist Ray Chen, making his Sydney Symphony debut.
Tchaikovsky’s genius lies in his sincerity of emotion and dramatic instincts – nowhere more so than in his Fifth Symphony, where Fate is the theme and all the joys and sorrows, struggles and passions of the soul are set out on this great musical canvas.
BERLIOZ Béatrice et Bénédict: Overture
BRAHMS Violin Concerto
TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No.5
Peter Oundjian conductor
Ray Chen violin
AUDIO PLAYER LISTING
Track 1 – BERLIOZ Béatrice et Bénedict: Overture
Montreal Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Dutoit
DECCA 478 1749
Track 2 – BRAHMS Violin Concerto: Finale
Christian Ferras, violin, with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
DECCA ELOQUENCE 457 298-2
Track 3 – TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No.5: Valse
Track 4 – TCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No.5: 1st movement
Russian National Orchestra, conducted by Mikhail Pletnev
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON 477 8699
Audio kindly supplied by Universal Music.
Available for purchase: Berlioz, Brahms and Tchaikovsky