Romantic, melancholic and compelling
Was this music too melancholy, too melodious, too fickle for him? Violinist Joseph Joachim refused to play Schumann’s Violin Concerto, even though it had been composed especially for him. Leave the manuscript in the drawer for the next hundred years, he ordered in his will.

Fortunately, Alena Baeva does play it now. “It’s one of my absolute favorites,” said the prize-winning Russian violinist of this fantastic music. Chief conductor Duncan Ward surrounds Schumann’s melancholy Violin Concerto with the overwhelming natural force of Brahms’s Third Symphony and Mahler’s intimate ode to wild flowers – in an arrangement by Benjamin Britten, expressing his deep admiration for Mahler.

PROGRAM
Mahler (arr. Britten)
What the Wild Flowers tell me

Schumann
Violin Concerto

Brahms
Symphony No. 3

Source : Theater aan het Vrijthof Website