Fateful – Brahms & Tchaikovsky

Let’s try that again! The hugely-anticipated final concert from last year, a casualty of Fate, is now rescheduled for 2021.

Who would want to miss this: two of the country’s most esteemed performers – conductor Alexander Briger AO and guest soloist Sydney Symphony concertmaster Andrew Haveron – in a program that features one of the greatest Romantic concertos plus one of its most dramatic symphonies, the two composed less than a year apart, each the fruit of their composer’s most fateful relationship.

Brahms’s Violin Concerto was dedicated to his friend Joseph Joachim, one of the 19th century’s greatest virtuosos, while Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony was dedicated to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck; artistic and financial support, in turn, enabling these masterpieces to come into existence.

Both works end in blazing fashion; Brahms in a rambunctious ‘Magyar’ finale, reminiscent of the Gypsy-style party turns he used to perform with his friend Joachim, and Tchaikovsky with a riotous Russian carnival atmosphere punctuated at its end by the motif of ‘Fate’ with which his symphony begins – life’s tumult stopped short before moving on. In 2021, a symbol of the times!