Update: Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, this performance has been cancelled.
Good music doesn’t write itself. You can hear the struggle for greatness in both Brahms’ masterful Violin Concerto and Sibelius’ ground-breaking Second Symphony.
ASO Concertmaster Natsuko Yoshimoto will take on the Brahms, a work that has been variously described as a concerto against violin, and ‘for violin against orchestra – and the violin wins!’ The violin strives for beauty, finds it in abundance during the Adagio, and celebrates with a joyful Hungarian rondo.
Sibelius once described his symphonies as ‘like Jacob wrestling with the angel’. Hearing the Second Symphony is like having all your fear and doubt gradually overcome by an unseen rising power, irresistible and immense.
The finale is hard-won, but exhilarating – it’s no wonder early Finnish audiences heard their struggle for independence embodied in this music. |