Santtu-Matias Rouvali           conductor
Sunwook Kim*                       piano

Brahms                                    Piano Concerto No. 2
Dvořák                                    Symphony No. 7

This concert doubles up on dream combinations. The Philharmonia’s inspirational Finnish Music Director is joined by the brilliant Korean pianist, Sunwook Kim*, for a perfect pairing of Romantic heavyweights. Sunwook shot to fame in 2006 when he won the Leeds International Piano Competition, aged just 18, and he’s been thrilling audiences worldwide ever since. Brahms’s epic Second Piano Concerto is the perfect showcase for his dazzling artistry. Written twenty years after the troubled birth of his First Piano Concerto, it enjoyed immediate and enduring success, largely due to the perfect balance Brahms achieves between epic scale, muscular virtuosity and its upbeat mood.

A perfectly matched companion piece comes in the form of Dvořák’s tautly dramatic Seventh Symphony, itself inspired by hearing Brahms’s turbulent Third Symphony a few months earlier. Reflecting the political struggles of the Czech nation as well as personal grief, it’s the most compellingly urgent of all his symphonies, the smouldering intensity of its opening catching fire in a thrilling mix of soaring melodies and driving rhythms.

* Sunwook Kim replaces Daniil Trifonov who, due to continuing visa issues, is unfortunately unable to perform in this concert.

Free pre-concert talk, 6.20pm in the auditorium: Dr Joanne Cormac, University of Nottingham, introduces the programme.