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Archived event

Performance details

Thursday 31 March 2022 at 7.30pm
Saturday 2 April 2022 at 7.30pm

Arts Centre Melbourne, Hamer Hall

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Featuring

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
Benjamin Northey conductor
Daniel de Borah piano

Program

Brahms Piano Concerto No.2
Korngold Symphony in F-sharp

About this performance

Joined by acclaimed Australian pianist Daniel de Borah, the MSO presents a drama-filled program of epic proportions.

  • It took Brahms three years to write this mammoth work for piano and orchestra – the longest piano concerto of the romantic era! The longer and more ambitious his works became, the more he quirkily referred to them in diminutive terms, describing this gargantuan work as ‘a very small piano concerto’. Currently head of Chamber Music at the Queensland Conservatorium, Daniel de Borah embarks on this journey of physical and musical endurance, guiding us through seamless and ever-surprising passages of tempestuousness, tenderness, yearning, and elegance.
  • By the time Erich Korngold’s Symphony in F-Sharp was finished in 1952, he’d been working in Hollywood as a film composer for nearly twenty years. As someone who exerted a profound influence on modern film music, it’s almost impossible not to create a movie in your mind to Korngold’s epically dramatic score – from thrilling chase scenes to tender love themes – this is orchestral grandiosity straight out of golden-era La La Land. Learn more

Duration: approx. 125 minutes including interval

Dive deeper into the music

Listen to an in-depth discussion between Benjamin Northey and ABC Classic presenter, Phillip Sametz, about Erich Korngold’s career and his Symphony in F#.

"a staggering masterpiece: brooding, biting, anguished, mourning, soul-stirring... [Korngold's] symphony seared itself in the mind...hearing it live, in all its emotional intensity and ferocity, was another experience entirely."

Rebecca Franks, The Times

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