David Afkham conductor
Arabella Steinbacher violin

BEETHOVEN  Overture, Coriolan
BRAHMS  Symphony No. 3
BEETHOVEN  Violin Concerto

Brahms’s Third Symphony, for some the composer’s greatest, is a magnificent achievement. He made his adoring Viennese public wait six years for it, and what he produced united, for one critic, the “titanism” of the first symphony with the “untroubled pastoral charm” of the second. Perhaps surprisingly, fireworks are not on the agenda here. The work instead is subdued, confessional and reserved, with each movement ending piano or pianissimo. Here it is preceded by Beethoven's concise yet suitably statuesque ‘tone poem’ Coriolan and followed by the ground-breaking Violin Concerto. This concert marks the Philharmonia début of charismatic young German conductor David Afkham.