We are thrilled to welcome the brilliant and versatile pianist Simon Callaghan to perform Brahms’s 2nd Piano Concerto. Brahms took the solo role at the premiere in Budapest in 1881, and followed this with a highly successful tour of Europe. Known for his dry wit, Brahms described the concerto as ‘the long terror’; it is indeed one of the longest, and most difficult concertos in the repertoire, and yet, from the heavenly opening horn solo to the lyrical melody for solo cello in the third movement, it could almost be described as chamber music on a grand scale. 

Born in Vienna in 1871, Alexander Zemlinsky had many musical connections. He was taught by Bruckner, encouraged by Brahms and Mahler, and became close friends and brother-in-law to Arnold Schoenberg. Unlike Schoenberg, however, Zemlinsky continued to compose in a late Romantic style rather than taking the atonal path. His extravagantly scored three-movement tone poem, The Mermaid (1902), was inspired by the Hans Christian Andersen folk tale, a tragic and hopeless love story. The impetus to pour his heart and soul into an orchestral piece came from his own unhappy circumstances: his star pupil Alma Schindler had just rejected him in favour of Mahler.