NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra / Alan Gilbert

»For just as little as one can understand what is new and young without being at home in tradition, so, too, love for the old must remain inauthentic and sterile if one closes oneself off to the new.« These words uttered by Adrian Leverkühn, the protagonist of Thomas Mann’s novel »Doctor Faustus«, could also be taken as a motto for the programme of this concert: chief conductor Alan Gilbert and star violinist Frank Peter Zimmermann bring together Johannes Brahms and the composers of the »Second Viennese School«. And for good reason – after all, Schönberg, Berg and Webern liked to refer to the complex logic in Brahms’s music.