Bach + Brahms

Brahms Revealed, the season-long Brahms festival, continues with a psychological profile of the composer. Music Director Nathalie Stutzmann kicks it off with a splendorous orchestral suite by Brahms’s hero, Johann Sebastian Bach. She follows the suite with something of a joke. When the officials at the University of Breslau awarded Brahms an honorary degree, they hoped that he would write them a symphony. Ever bullheaded and often a tease, Brahms instead gave them the Academic Festival Overture, a rollicking piece packed with student drinking songs.

In 1881, Brahms poured that same free spirit into his Piano Concerto No. 2. It’s an absolute charmer for audiences, but a bear for the pianist. A concerto with the grandeur of a symphony, it is athletic, turbulent, tender, and fiery, and a perfect showcase for the talents of pianist and ASO Artist-in-Residence, Anna Geniushene.