Newbury Spring Festival: Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Brahms

Programme

Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto is a masterpiece in piano music writing, a deeply intimate work that remains one of the composer’s best loved. Tonight, we hear it in the hands of Alim Beisembayev, winner of the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2021.

Brahms’s magnificent First Symphony was many years in the making. The wait was worth it – it’s a 45-minute journey through all the poetry and power an orchestra can conjure.

First, we hear Mendelssohn’s overture, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage. Taking inspiration from poetry by Goethe, Mendelssohn’s orchestral seascape is a charming, evocative 10 minutes of musical storytelling.