The work that Leonidas Kavakos, whose teachers included Ferenc Rados, will play one of the most extraordinary masterpieces of the concerto literature. Brahms wrote it for his best friend, the Hungarian violinist Joseph Joachim, and the composition's bearing, nobility (and of course, its tone) recall the similarly mature violin concerto written by Brahms's great predecessor Beethoven. Also Beethovenian is the moderation with which Brahms treats the issue of virtuosity in his Violin Concerto: the strenuous part demands much of the soloist, but not in the "showy” way familiar from Romantic violin concertos. And all this brought it criticism from various quarters as well, Pablo de Sarasate, for example, sarcastically remarked that he had no desire to play a concerto in which the only real melody is played by the oboe...
The other piece in the programme is a mystical and transcendental journey into the infinite. Schubert never got to hear his Symphony in C major, one of the starting points of Romanticism. Discovering it after the composer's death, Schumann is the one who coined the now-famous phrase "himmlische Länge” - "heavenly length” - to describe the music's epic proportions. Schubert's Symphony No. 5, like his String Quintet, also written in C major, and the later Piano Sonata in B-flat major, are works that reveal new layers with each listening. They are truly inexhaustible.


Presented by: Müpa Budapest