Sir Antonio Pappano conducts Brahms and Dvořák — With Alexandre Kantorow

This evening of nonstop emotions with maestro Sir Antonio Pappano at the head of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe features French piano star Alexandre Kantorow — one of today's finest Brahmsians — in Brahms's breathlessly intense Piano Concerto No. 1, paired with Dvořák's sublime Seventh Symphony! Kantorow, "a Brahms interpreter of unusual insight and distinctiveness" (The Guardian), marries knife-edge precision and heart-rending expression in the concerto's formidable opening Maestoso, the middle Adagio that Clara Schumann called "exquisite," and the stormy Rondo that maintains the intensity of its D-minor onslaught all the way to a triumphant D-major conclusion. This stirring tonal transformation is paralleled in Dvořák's Symphony No. 7, the product of the composer's desire to write a symphony that would "stir the world," an aim readily achieved in the hands of the excellent COE. Less widely known today than the Ninth, the Seventh is nonetheless considered by many observers to be Dvořák's greatest symphony; like all of the proud Bohemian's finest works, it movingly tempers the grandeur of nationalistic spirit with bucolic romance and lively folk tradition.

Photo © Sasha Gusov