Lyricism and Drama Brahms, Adès, Beethoven

Bristol Beacon, Bristol

On the completion of his mature Second Piano Concerto, Brahms announced his “ever so tiny piano concerto with an ever so tiny and dainty scherzo.” Its four movements combine to create one of the grandest piano concertos of the 19th century, with the music expressing a Classical lyricism and Romantic sense of drama in perfect harmony with each other. In a melange of foxtrots and waltzes, sometimes flirtatiously raunchy, sometimes delicate and mysterious, Adès elegantly combines his own personal style and clever instrumentation with characteristic features from cabaret, tango, and popular music. The suite, using music from his opera on the scandal surrounding Sixties socialite, Margaret Campbell, is rich, playful, dramatic, and expressive Schumann poetically captured Beethoven’s Fourth Symphony’s relationship to its neighbours when he called it “a slender Grecian maiden between two Nordic giants”. It is certainly lighter in tone, but it is far from lightweight. In terms of economy and tightly coiled energy, it is every bit the equal of its counterparts.