| Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra | |
| Pablo Heras-Casado | Conductor |
Brahms’ second symphony is bright and lovely. The melodies have been likened to the rippling streams in the postcard-perfect village of Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a small area in southern Austria that Brahms visited while composing the symphony.
It is well known that Brahms felt significant performance anxiety upon facing the genre of his role model, Beethoven, and it took him twenty-one years to produce his first symphony. But when he began to work on his second symphony, immediately after the world premiere of his first, it was as if something had been released – he felt free.
Music does not have to echo its composer’s mood, but something in the second symphony reflects a bright period in his life. Pablo Heras-Casado, known as both an orchestral and opera conductor, will paint the dazzling romance of this music together with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. He regularly conducts orchestras such as the Vienna and Berlin Philharmonics and the Orchestre de Paris, and he has made celebrated appearances at Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Aix-en-Provence Festival. For four seasons, until 2022, he will also lead the orchestra at the Teatro Real in Madrid in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Filmed in October 2019.
