Discovering Masterpieces – Brahms: Violin Concerto

Discovering Masterpieces – Brahms: Violin Concerto

Watch the series ‘Discovering Masterpieces’! Your audio-visual concert guide to the great masterpieces of classical music. The series brings you 20 half-hour documentaries on 20 classical masterpieces: acclaimed experts, famous soloists and outstanding conductors take you on a journey back to the time and place of composition. In today’s documentary, Johannes Brahms’ ‘Violin Concerto in D Major’ is discussed. In the eyes of his contemporaries, Johannes Brahms’s violin concerto was so different from everything that had come before that, after the premiere, a critic stated that it wasn’t a concerto, but a “symphony with violin obligato”. The famous American violinist Gil Shaham introduces viewers to its lovely melodies and motifs and seeks to disprove the famous criticism. Wolfgang Sandberger, the director of the German Brahms Institute in Lübeck, analyzes the work and describes its genesis.