Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra / Kent Nagano

When Johannes Brahms’s friend, violinist Joseph Joachim, bade farewell to the composer after a performance of a piano arrangement of Brahms’s Tragic Overture, he commented: »I hope your instrumentation is both amusing and tragic«. And it’s true that Brahms’s works often have two faces to them. On the one hand, the composer had a penchant for melancholy, for an elegiac and even tragic mood. But at the same time he also had a joyful streak, and was fond of boisterous moments and a degree of sarcasm. With Veronika Eberle as soloist in the Violin Concerto, the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra brings out clearly the two sides of Brahms’s music.