Brahms, Bruckner & Shostakovich | London Philharmonic Orchestra

When his guiding light Robert Schumann attempted suicide and was admitted to an asylum in 1853, Brahms finally decided to act on his senior’s advice and attempt a multi-movement orchestral work. Partly a commemoration of Schumann’s demise, partly a wild fight against it, Brahms’s First Piano Concerto is frank, tender and impulsive. Shostakovich, too, felt the pressure of handling a large orchestra when he wrote his First Symphony as a St Petersburg student. But he created a piece of brilliant tragicomedy, so clearly suggestive of things to come, including the darkness that would infest his life just as it did Brahms’s.