A moving program
Brahms's final, exceptional Symphony No. 4 transports us with its intensity from the first soul-stirring notes. Filled with both beauty and melancholy, it emotionally devastates before serving up a cathartic climax that teems with unforgettable rhythmic and polyphonic richness.
His last work, the autumnal feeling has since been reexamined by modern audiences, and is sometimes seen as one of the darkest outpourings from the composer and the 19th century.
Opening the concert will be the U.S premiere of Thomas Larcher's Symphony No. 2, Kenotaph, a stirring and immensely powerful commemoration of the refugee crisis in Europe and the victims, men, women and children, that are claimed by the waters of the Mediterranean as they flee the warzones of the middle east. Imbued with anger and yet expertly lyrical, it stands as a symbolic and important reminder of the ongoing situation.