Gunther Herbig conductor
Imogen Cooper piano

Ravel Suite, Mother Goose
Schumann Piano Concerto
Brahms Symphony 2




Schumann’s unflinching adoration for his pianist wife Clara is the spark behind his Piano Concerto, a love-letter in music that offers a touching insight into one of the most famously passionate romances of the nineteenth century. But Schumann also took the young Johannes Brahms very much to heart, who he said would ‘spring like Minerva from the head of Jove’ to take the compositional world by storm. He was only partly right; Brahms’s First Symphony (heard on 11 December 2009) took him a painstaking fourteen years to write. But his Second did indeed spring forth like Minerva, flowing as seamlessly as a stream, abounding in pure, exhilarating joy.

We regret that Hélène Grimaud is indisposed.

To hear selected movements from this concert, select a track below to open the music file. (Windows Media Player required.)

RAVEL: Ma mere l'oye (Mother Goose) (version for orchestra) - I. Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty
RAVEL: Ma mere l'oye (Mother Goose) (version for orchestra) - IV. The Conversations of Beauty and the Beast
RAVEL: Ma mere l'oye (Mother Goose) (version for orchestra) - V. The Fairy Garden
SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 - I.
SCHUMANN: Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 54 - II.
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 - I.
BRAHMS: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 - II.