Stella Chen, the winner of the Gramophone Young Artist of the Year 2023, is set to make her debut at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw with Brahms' magnificent Violin Concerto. Following this, the Brussels Philharmonic and Kazushi Ono will perform Mahler's picturesque First Symphony.

-----

The Titan

Mahler spent four years developing the first sketches of his Symphony No. 1 into a full-fledged composition. He sketched the outlines of a symphonic poem, but gave it the structures of a symphony. His audacious approach would forever transform the genre: "The symphony should mirror the world in its entirety. It should encompass everything," he would state later.

Nevertheless, these extremes bewildered the audience at its premiere. They were accustomed to Brahms, not the eccentric world Mahler was unveiling. The critics were harsh in their judgement - and even though Mahler felt 'they had no sense of what he meant', he tinkered further with the work and made drastic adjustments. With boundless energy, ironic winks, lovely ballads and grand heroism, this debut symphony serves as the seminal seed from which the subsequent ones would bloom.

Symphonic Concerto

Liberated of a great deal of anxiety after the positive reception of his Second Symphony, Brahms began working on his Violin Concert, dedicated to the virtuoso Joseph Joachim. He gave Brahms tips and advice throughout the composition process, but Brahms only occasionally followed them. He pursued his own path and wrote something close to a symphonic concerto, in which the orchestra’s role was not subordinate to the violin solo, which normally plays the main role in a concerto. After the first performances, it was even whispered that it was ‘a concerto against, not for the violin’.