The programme opens with a modern and powerful work by one of Estonia’s most important composers, who became familiar to West European audiences from the early 1990s onwards. The conductor is fellow Estonian Olari Elts, who has been principal guest conductor of the prestigious Scottish Chamber Orchestra for some years, and who also conducts regularly in Australia. An enterprising violinist always open to expanding his repertoire with new works, Barnabás Kelemen scarcely needs an introduction to the audience. This evening, he pays homage to Leonard Bernstein, the conductor and composer who passed away 25 years ago. The Serenade is properly speaking a programmatic violin concerto, drawing its inspiration from Plato’s Symposium and written in 1954, around the same time as the composer’s hugely successful Broadway musicals such as West Side Story and On the Town. The composition is characterised by Bernstein’s customarily graceful melodies and neo-Romantic sensibility.
The second half of the evening features a serenade composed almost 100 years earlier, a masterpiece by Johannes Brahms regrettably heard only rarely. It was the composer’s earliest large-scale attempt at a purely orchestral work as he flirted with the symphonic genre. The colourfully orchestrated six-movement composition is lighter and more loosely woven than the German Romantic composer’s four symphonies, and perfectly blends with the two 20th century works to be heard at this concert.

Presented by: Hungarian National Philharmonic