Sunday, April 6, 2025
Golden Hall, Musikverein, Vienna
Unfortunately on this Sunday morning I missed the Concerto’s first movement, even more regretful given the soloists’ soulful contributions to the slow movement and then the lively if articulate Finale that displayed a collegiate approach between them, the orchestra and the conductor. As an encore, the duo gave a fiery account of a Brahms Hungarian Dance; I would have said it was No.1, but the radio announcer, he say “Funf”. Following the interval, Christian Thielemann led a spacious, songful Symphony IV, intensely lyrical if a little too rondo-like, making the first-movement’s breaking-free coda all the more inevitable, and necessary, yet the slow movement was similarly chaste and needed a demonstrative Scherzo to counter it and bring Brahms’s innermost expressions into public consciousness, the passacaglia final movement then given full weight and emotional turbulence, Brahms’s ultimate Symphony heading to the finishing post as if pursued by demons.