After spending the summer of 1883 writing the work at Wiesbaden, on the Rhine, Brahms played the first and final movements on the piano to Antonín Dvořák, who remarked that his fellow composer had surpassed his previous two symphonies, “if not, perhaps, in grandeur, then certainly in beauty”. 

KSO also performs Dvořák’s popular Cello Concerto (1894-95), in which the composer pays a poignant tribute to his seriously ill sister-in-law. Having corrected Dvořák’s proofs of the work, Brahms remarked: “If I had known that it was possible to compose such a concerto for the cello, I would have tried it myself!” 

The concert opens with Berlioz’s Le corsaire (1844), a dashing overture that imagines the dangers and thrills of life as a pirate, its title suggesting Byron’s poem The Corsair. Dramatic and lyrical, it shares rhythmic energy with the composer’s Le carnaval romain.

Described as “one of the very best amateur groups in the country” by Classical Music magazine, KSO has been hailed by Classical Source for “putting on bold, adventurous programmes that few of the ‘big five’ in London would either think of or get away with”.