With his Piano Concerto No.2, Brahms shows us a mature man and a mature composer. Forty-eight years old when he wrote the work, the composer also served as the soloist at the world première. In addition to the piano part, he also gave a fair number of solos to the instruments in the orchestra, making the concerto an actual dialogue between the various instruments. In his Nocturne in G-flat major, the late Romanticist Giuseppe Martucci wrote music that was simultaneously melodically Italian and, in Wagnerian fashion, densely flowing as it gazes into infinity. Following his Romantic idyll will come some extraordinarily progressive music by Béla Bartók that, in spite of all the profaneness, aimed to provide a tangible depiction of the power of love and human emotions. Although Bartók started the actual composition work in the autumn of 1918 and finished it in May 1919, it was only in 1924 that he completed the scoring. Later on, Bartók created an orchestral suite out of the original dance drama, and this was premièred by the Budapest Philharmonic Orchestra in 1928.

Presented by: Pannon Philharmonic