Brahms and Shostakovich: Tragedy through Music

Rafael Payare, conductor
Daniil Trifonov, piano

BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
SHOSTAKOVICH: Symphony No. 10 in E minor, Op. 93

Rafael Payare returns to Jacobs Music Center to lead two profound masterworks composed a century apart: Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1, performed by Daniil Trifonov, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10. Both works unite the intensely personal with the powerfully public.

Brahms’ concerto, one of the 19th century’s towering achievements, began in anguish over Robert Schumann’s tragic fate and Brahms’ devotion to Schumann and his wife, Clara. Initially conceived as a symphony, it evolved into a vast concerto – his first major orchestral work and the piece that established him internationally. Grief, love, and moral courage flow through its pages, expressed in music of symphonic scale and searing emotional depth.

Nearly a hundred years later, Shostakovich completed his Symphony No. 10 in the aftermath of Stalin’s death in 1953. The music bears witness to immense suffering under tyranny while reclaiming the voice of the individual. Through coded motifs of his own name, allusions to those he cared for, and echoes of Russian poetry, Mahler, and Jewish folk tradition, Shostakovich shaped a drama of fear, endurance, and defiance.

From Brahms’ Romantic introspection to Shostakovich’s defiant modern vision, this concert explores two artists confronting fate – and affirming the resilience of the human spirit.