Set a course for romantic Germany for this concert celebrating the friendship between Brahms and Schumann.

Completed the day after the young Brahms' first visit to the Schumanns by a composer whose mental faculties were already beginning to decline, it was Brahms himself who saved the manuscript of the Violin Concerto in D minor that Clara Schumann wanted to destroy. Rejected by its dedicatee, Joseph Joachim, Schumanns concerto laid forgotten until its resurrection in 1937 by the Nazi regime before Yehudi Menuhin masterfully introduced it to New York in 1938. This little-loved concerto has gradually risen to prominence in the concerto repertoire alongside those by Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Brahms.

The latter's Symphony No. 2 is a happy, serene work. The curtain gradually rises from the mists of northern Germany to end in an almost Mediterranean light in D major that is as thunderous as it is joyous.

Spoiler alert! We could not resist sharing this short extract of the 4th movement of Brahms second symphony, recorded by the OSR and Marek Janowski on 23.09.2009 :