Brahms nights and complete cycles
Bernard Haitink conducts the Chamber Orchestra of Europe in two Brahms Nights
The music of Brahms is featured strongly with complete cycles of the composer's symphonies and concertos. After the successful re-introduction of single-composer nights with Beethoven last year, there are also two nights devoted to Brahms.
Bernard Haitink and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe lead the Brahms Nights with two concerts in which Emanuel Ax performs both of Brahms's piano concertos alongside Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4 ( & ). Angela Hewitt and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Manze complete the Brahms Nights with a Late Night Prom which places Brahms alongside his contemporary, Schumann, and gives audiences a chance to hear Schoenberg's arrangement of Brahms's Piano Quartet in G minor ().
The Brahms symphony cycle is completed by Donald Runnicles and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scottish Symphony Orchestra with Symphony No. 2 () and by Jirà BÄ›lohlávek and the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Symphony Orchestra with Symphony No. 1 (). BÄ›lohlávek also conducts the triumphant Academic Festival Overture as one of the curtain-raisers to the season on the First Night ().
Other highlights include Dejan Lazi's fresh take on Brahms's Violin Concerto when he plays the UK premiere of his own arrangement for piano (). The original can be heard a few days earlier performed by Christian Tetzlaff (). In their debut Proms season, brothers Renaud and Gautier Capuçon join forces in Brahms's final orchestral work, the Double Concerto for violin and cello, with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France and Myung-Whun Chung (). Also making their Proms debut are ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Radio 3 New Generation Artists the Elias Quartet, who join Julian Bliss for a Monday-lunchtime performance of Brahms's autumnal Clarinet Quintet ().
Proms Plus offers a range of introductions to Brahms's music. The musicians performing his work give Proms Plus Intros (, & ), while musicologists Kenneth Hamilton and Stephen Johnson discuss "the real Brahms" with Tom Service ().
