Brahms' Third
Location: Cheltenham
Date: 18-02-2010
Time: 19:30
Venue Details: Cheltenham Town Hall
Works Performed
- Elgar : Enigma Variations
- Barber : Violin Concerto
- Brahms : Symphony No.3
Performers
- Conductor : Marin Alsop
- Soloist: James Ehnes (Violin)
The Variations on an Original Theme is a brilliantly varied portrait gallery of Elgar’s friends, family and neighbours. They contain some of the most charming and deeply felt music Elgar ever penned.
Marin and James repeat Barber’s gloriously lyrical concerto after their triumphant Proms performance at the Royal Albert Hall. The Violin Concerto is frequently cited as a sort of turning point in Barber's output, a work whose first two movements reflect the ingratiating melodic-romantic style of his earlier compositions and whose finale represents the first intimations of a new and tightened approach - leaner and somewhat more austere.
From the beginning, Brahms' Third Symphony has proven to be his most evocative. With numerous acknowledgments to Wagner and allusions to the same Rhine-based mythology, it provides other fascinations as well, including a "Minuet" that is more funereal than dance-like, and a quietly mysterious theme heard all too briefly in the second movement, which returns in the finale to assumes unexpectedly heroic dimensions.
“Free of affectation or vanity, yet blessed with as stunning a technique and as intriguing a musical personality as any violinist, Ehnes seems set to become one of classical music’s biggest names.”
The Times
"In between came one of the most beautifully poised, heartfelt accounts of Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto it would be possible to imagine. The soloist was the young Canadian James Ehnes."
The Telegraph
"James Ehnes was the soloist, effusively lyrical in the first two movements, hair-raisingly virtuosic in the finale, which was deemed unplayable at the time of composition."
The Guardian
