Brahms, Concerto pour violon

Romanian conductor Cristian Măcelaru has only just taken up the reins of the Orchestre national de France, and this evening he will get the chance to display the breath of his talent in the Germanic repertoire he loves so much.

He will be joined by Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, who, according to Télérama, is “one of the world’s greatest violinists”, and who will treat us to the enthusiastic themes and arabesques of Brahms’s famed Violin Concerto. Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider’s clear, penetrating playing is reminiscent of that of his idol, the great Eugène Ysaÿe, expressing the vitality of this major piece of romanticism.

The orchestra will follow with Schubert’s Symphony n°9, a grandiose piece, first performed long after his death by Schumann, who praised the “divine lengths” of this exceptional piece, which, at the time, was considered to be too difficult to play.