Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra: Tchaikovsky and Brahms

Chief Conductor Designate Tabita Berglund joins fearless American pianist Kirill Gerstein for a concert dominated by big statements from two giants of music history. Originally a piano sonata, then a symphony, and eventually a piano concerto – Brahms’s work was initially dismissed as a misfire. But successive generations have better understood its combination of grand drama and conversational interplay, and we’ve never been more ready to be swept along by the concerto’s combination of grandiose majesty and intimate beauty.

If Brahms’s concerto scales great heights, Tchaikovsky’s final symphony bring us back down to earth with gripping music about real life, real struggles and real tragedies. Tchaikovsky was dealing with unrequited love and the prospect of public shame when he composed his heartbreakingly autobiographical Pathétique symphony – perhaps the most vivid yet beautiful vision of darkness and exhaustion ever captured in music. Days after finishing his most emotionally intense symphony, the composer was dead.