Hannes Minnaar with Brahms' Second Piano Concerto

Renowned American conductor David Robertson leads the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra in music by Mahler and Hindemith. He also accompanies Hannes Minnaar in Brahms' Second Piano Concerto.

David Robertson with Mahler and Hindemith
This concert is conducted by David Robertson, one of the most prominent American conductors of our time, who has been a guest of the Radio Philharmonic Orchestra several times in recent years. He opens the program with two extraordinary symphonic works. To make Mahler a little more popular in England, Britten made a subtle arrangement for a modest orchestra of the second movement from Mahler's Symphony No. 3.
Fleeing Nazism in exile in America, Hindemith composed the Symphonic Metamorphosis. Based on music by Carl Maria von Weber, it is a sophisticated symbiosis of themes from his extensive oeuvre.

Hannes Minnaar plays Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2.
After the break it is the turn of pianist Hannes Minnaar, artist in residence of the AVROTROS Friday Concert. He plays Brahms' symphonically monumental Second Piano Concerto. The composer himself jokingly called it a "tiny piano concerto," but with its length of fifty minutes it is one of the longest ever written. For Hannes Minnaar a composition after his own heart: 'With its almost sadistically difficult piano part, it transcends the struggle between piano and orchestra. But it is also a journey through a multitude of moods, lyrical and unruly in the beginning, a third movement like a love song and lightly sparkling in the finale'.