Valery Gergiev conducts Brahms and Szymanowski – With the London Symphony Orchestra

The London Symphony Orchestra performs Brahms and Szymanowski under the baton of Valery Gergiev.

The concert opens with Brahms’s Symphony No. 3 in F Major, one of the composer’s most personal works, written in 1883. The first movement is characterized by an energetic main theme with an upbeat rhythm and exoticaccents, reinforced by the plaintive character of the secondary themes. The theme of the third movement became particularly famous thanks to the soundtrack of Anatole Litvak’s 1961 film Goodbye Again with Ingrid Bergman. The slow-moving waltz is first heard in the cello, before passing from the strings to the wind instruments in a haunting echo. 

Next up are the Variations on a Theme by Haydn in B-flat Major. Brahms uses the “Saint Anthony’s Chorale” for his theme, a mysterious work whose attribution to Haydn is not entirely certain. The finale is in the form of a passacaglia, meaning the bass line is introduced by the cellos and double basses at least 18 times. The evening ends with a work premiered by the London Symphony Orchestra itself, Karol Szymanowski’s Symphony No. 3 for tenor, choir, and orchestra. It is a perfect illustration of Szymanowski's esoteric artistic vantage point, and its subtitle “The Song of the Night” immerses us in a poetic, nocturnal world, sublimated by violin solos, wind instruments, and percussion…