Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra

Brahms’s last symphonic work, the A minor double concerto, is a heart-warming ode to a great friendship interspersed with highs and lows. Perhaps the first thing to come to mind in the dialogue of violin and cello is that of two ageing men, the composer and the violinist József Joachim. For this recital, however, two young women artists, Júlia Pusker and Dóra Kokas, approach the dialogue-character of Brahms’s music from a different angle.

In the second half it is the turn of the master’s second symphony, which Brahms himself conducted at a concert in Pest in 1879. An article from the period stated of Brahms that “he now appears for the first time in the company of our philharmonic orchestra. He is often called the modern Bach, the heir of Schumann and Beethoven. We can agree with those who assert that such a symphony has not been written since Beethoven.”