Luisi & Brahms

Fabio Luisi is a highly acclaimed Brahms conductor, able to open up the deepest layers of consciousness in the music in perfect balance between head and heart. Here he leads the DR Symfoniorkestret in an all-Brahms programme with the melancholy 4th Symphony and the exuberant and good-humoured piano quartet in colourful orchestration. The composer Arnold Schönberg loved Brahms' Piano Quartet in G minor. But he intensely hated that the piano often drowned out the violin, viola and cello. The solution was that Schönberg himself transformed the quartet from a chamber-music jewel into a major work for symphony orchestra in a complete rewriting of the score. A work that stands entirely on its own feet in a remarkable fusion of two musical geniuses and a live-music experience full of joie de vivre and enthusiasm, clearly carried by love. DR Symfoniorkestret's chief conductor Fabio Luisi has in recent years proved himself an exquisite Brahms conductor; his performances balance perfectly between head and heart and demonstrate a rare ability to open up the many layers of consciousness in the music. The culmination of this all-Brahms evening is the composer's last symphonic work - a meditation on mortality, a personal journey through melancholy and a final expression of both intellectual and creative defiance. In Luisi's hands, Brahms' Symphony No. 4 confirms its status as the composer's most moving and inspiring work.

• Fabio LuisiDirigent