photo: Walter van Dyck

Invoking the old nomenclature for thematic composer’s concerts, we might consider this event a Brahms Academy, one that kicks off with the splendidly humorous Academic Festival Overture. This composition, which lavishly expresses his gratitude for the honorary doctorate the University of Breslau bestowed on him and concludes with the dignified melody of the Gaudeamus igitur, is only the beginning, as conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy will then follow it up with the composer’s final orchestral work, the Double Concerto in A minor, which puts the spotlight on the violin and cello. This airing of the work that Brahms wrote in 1887 in order to reconcile with his aggrieved friend, the great József Joachim, once again features exceptional soloists: the British violinist Anthony Marwood, who is returning to Hungary at the invitation of Concerto Budapest, and Hungarian cellist Miklós Perényi, who requires no introduction. Like the two previous compositions, the Third Symphony was composed in the 1880s, when the conductor who premiered it, the Hungarian-born Hans Richter, described it as “Brahms’s heroic symphony, his Eroica.” Of the finale, Joachim wrote, “...how beautiful and expiative the apotheosis is: glorification in death!"