Cancelled: Hough plays Brahms

Schumann’s overture to his tragic opera Genoveva sets the mood and foreshadows the story’s path from the brooding intensity of C minor to the ecstatic joy of C major, duplicating his hero Beethoven’s progression in the famed Fifth Symphony. The monumental First Piano Concerto occupied Brahms for at least five years. After beginning a two-piano sonata in 1854, he soon realised that the musical material required orchestral treatment and recast the opening as the first movement. Later adding the jaunty finale, followed by the radiant slow movement, adjustments were made up to and even beyond the first performances in 1859.