Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg / Kent Nagano

Matters of the Heart

»It is love, pure and simple, and it makes your heart soar,« said friend and colleague Antonín Dvořák, enthusing about the beauty of the shortest of Johannes Brahms‘ four symphonies. Ever since its premiere in 1883, the third symphony by the Hamburg-based composer regularly garners rapturous receptions from audiences. Right at the beginning of the composition, Brahms quotes a saying that often passed his lips as a youth, capturing a certain detachment he felt: »Frei, aber froh« (»Free, but happy«). In this particular concert, the work by Brahms, who remained unmarried throughout his life, is paired up, as it were, with a wedding from 1923 as a musical response calling back from the modern age: Igor Stravinsky‘s »Les Noces«. In the form of a dance cantata or ballet with song, Stravinsky set the four tableaux of a Russian peasant wedding to music for vocal quartet, choir, four pianos and extensive strings. The libretto, written by the composer himself, is based on Russian wedding poems. It is love, pure and simple ...