Programme Notes | Trifonov plays Brahms

Thu 21 May 2026 • 20.15 Fri 22 May 2026 • 20.15

PROGRAMME

conductor Lahav Shani

piano Daniil Trifonov

Arnold Schoenberg 1874-1951

Transfigured Night, Op. 4 (1899/1917)

intermission

Johannes Brahms 1833-1897

Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83 (1878/81)

• Allegro non troppo

• Allegro appassionato

• Andante

• Allegretto grazioso

Concert ends at around 22:15

Most recent performances by our orchestra:

Schoenberg Transfigured Night: Feb 1999, conductor Gilbert Varga Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2: Apr 2018, piano Nelson Freire, conductor James Conlon

One hour before the start of the concert, Marien van Staalen will give an introduction (in Dutch) to the programme, admission €7,50. Tickets are available at the hall, payment by debit card. The introduction is free for Vrienden.

Romantic souls

At the turn of the 19th century, Arnold Schoenberg found himself straddling the line between Romanticism and Modernism. Twenty years earlier, Johannes Brahms had, in contrast, still embedded the Romantic spirit within classical forms.

Schoenberg

At night, two lovers walk through a forest. The woman confesses to the man that she is pregnant, but the child is not his, and she is tormented by guilt. He comforts her, telling her to put her fears aside and that, out of love for her, he will accept the child. The woman feels relieved and the two walk on through what is now a transfigured night.

Such is the content of a poem by Richard Dehmel, ‘Verklärte Nacht’. A beautiful poem. Arnold Schoenberg thought so too. Deeply moved, he put his own Transfigured Night to paper in a few weeks in September 1899. He was only 25 years old, and deeply in love himself at the time; the world of the poem was not far removed from his own experience. Transfigured Night marked a significant step forward in his still nascent oeuvre; ‘masterful,’ judged both Gustav Mahler and Schoenberg’s teacher and future father-inlaw, Alexander von Zemlinsky.

If only everyone had been so kind… But the conservative gentlemen of the Wiener Tonkünstlerverein, to whom Zemlinsky had handed the score for performance, mocked

it. Horribly modern, they thought – they had no idea how difficult Schoenberg’s later music would become – and they joked that it sounded ‘as if someone had wiped over the score of Wagner’s Tristan whilst the ink was still wet’. It was not until three years later that musicians dared to stage the premiere. Transfigured Night fared no better then. It was a complete debacle; a few people clapped, but the rest hissed, shouted or came to blows. The press, too, was critical. Could that moonlit love story, sneered the Neue Freie Presse, really be conveyed without words? The reviewer did not believe such a thing were possible. But a literal representation had never been Schoenberg’s intention at all. He had merely wished to give expression to the human feelings he found so beautifully expressed in the poem. Recognition came later all the same: Transfigured Night was to become Schoenberg’s most frequently performed score.

Brahms

Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto exudes a sense of relaxed tranquillity. The music is like a long, warm but never too hot summer’s day, stretching on endlessly; both man and

nature feel content. Here we hear from a composer at the height of his creative powers, who is fully aware of this and derives great, serene happiness from it. Brahms completed the concerto in the summer of 1881; he was then 48 years old and, following the great success of his first two symphonies, had been unofficially named ‘Beethoven’s successor.’ No small feat.

Here we hear from a composer at the height of his creative powers, who derives serene happiness from it

It remains a mystery why Brahms was never able to express in plain terms that he was satisfied with one of his own works, or to say anything positive about it at all (perhaps one must hear it in the music itself). With selfdeprecating humour, he announced the birth of the new opus to his friend Elisabeth von Herzogenberg: ‘I wanted to tell you that I have written a lovely, lovely little piano concerto with a very small, tender little scherzo.’ Strange words for a piano concerto which, with a playing time of over 50 minutes, is one of the most substantial ever written. And to his friend, the surgeon Theodor Billroth, he spoke of ‘a few little piano pieces’. Yet one cannot help but assume that Brahms was proud of his work. He performed it himself on numerous occasions, including during a tour of the Netherlands, and rarely did he go to such lengths to bring one of his compositions to the public’s attention. With interruptions, he had worked on it for four years before drawing the final bar line on 7 July 1881 in Pressbaum near Vienna. You’d expect something in return for that.

The concerto has four movements. Unusual, as a concerto usually has three. Brahms inserted the second movement (a scherzo) because he found the first movement somewhat ‘simple’. Another such disparaging term, but this was apparently Brahms’ way of saying that fierce drama and passion had been spared in the opening movement to come across all the more convincingly in the scherzo. Brahms’ publisher, Fritz Simrock, felt that this scherzo should simply be omitted. Apparently, he failed to see that it served an important function, including that of separating the first movement and the Andante, both of which are predominantly lyrical in tone. Brahms therefore did not even consider withdrawing it.

The beginning of this piano concerto is also exceptional. No orchestral tutti! A solo horn sings the opening; the piano joins in with tentative broken chords, softly humming along. In addition, another orchestral instrument plays a splendid part in the concerto, namely the cello. It brings the Andante to life in a way that reminds quite a few listeners of how unfortunate it is that Brahms never wrote a cello concerto. This Andante refers in two ways to the most important woman in Brahms’s life, the pianist and composer Clara Schumann. Perhaps he borrowed the idea of the cello solo from Clara’s piano concerto, which also features a prominent cello part in the slow movement. Elsewhere in the Andante there is a passage of the utmost tenderness: in F sharp major, the clarinets quote Brahms’s song ‘Todessehnen’, one of his songs most directly addressed to Clara. Brahms would later develop the cello melody further in the song ‘Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer’.

Stephen Westra

Lahav Shani • chief conductor

Born: Tel Aviv, Israel

Current position: chief conductor Rotterdam

Philharmonic Orchestra; music director Israel

Philharmonic Orchestra; chief conductor designate Münchner Philharmoniker (from 2026/27)

Before: principal guest conductor Vienna

Symphony Orchestra

Education: piano at the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music Tel Aviv; conducting and piano at the Academy of Music Hanns Eisler Berlin; mentor: Daniel Barenboim

Breakthrough: 2013, First Prize Gustav Mahler

International Conducting Competition in Bamberg

Subsequently: guest appearances Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Gewandhaus Orchester, Münchner

Philharmoniker, Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, London Symphony Orchestra, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra

Debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2016

Daniil Trifonov • piano

Born: Nizhniy Novgorod, Russia

Education: Gnessin School of Music Mosow with Tatiana Zelikman; Cleveland Institute of Music (piano and composition)

Awards: Chopin Competition Warsaw (2010); Tchaikovsky Competition Moscow; FrancoAbbiati Award (2013); Musical America’s Artist of the Year (2019)

Breakthrough: 2011, First Prize Arthur Rubinstein Competition Tel Aviv, also Pnina Salzman Prize, Chamber Music Prize and Audience Favorite Prize

Solo-appearances: Berlin Philharmonic, Staatskapelle Dresden, Tonhalle Orchester

Zürich, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, symphony orchestras of Boston, Chicago, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic

Recitals: Carnegie Hall New York, Wigmore Hall London, Musikverein Vienna, Suntory Hall Tokyo, Salle Pleyel Paris

Debut with the Rotterdam Philharmonic: 2016

Agenda

Lahav and Friends

Thu 28 May 2026 • 20.15

soprano Chen Reiss

piano Lahav Shani

musicians from the Rotterdam

Philharmonic

Mozart Quintet for Piano and Winds

Mahler Three Rückert Songs

Schubert Trout Quintet

Fri 29 May 2026 • 20.15

Sun 31 May 2026 • 14.15 conductor and piano Lahav Shani

soprano Chen Reiss

Mozart Concert Aria ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te?’

Zedginidze Symphonic Poem (World Premiere)

Wagenaar Overture Cyrano de Bergerac

Mahler Symphony No. 4

Chief Conductor

Lahav Shani

Honorary Conductor

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Principal Guest Conductor

Tarmo Peltokoski

First Violin

Marieke Blankestijn, Concert Master

Vlad Stanculeasa, Concert Master

Quirine Scheffers

Hed Yaron Meyerson

Saskia Otto

Rachel Browne

Maria Dingjan

Marie-José Schrijner

Noëmi Bodden

Petra Visser

Sophia Torrenga

Hadewijch Hofland

Annerien Stuker

Alexandra van Beveren

Marie Duquesnoy

Second Violin

Charlotte Potgieter

Laurens van Vliet

Elina Staphorsius

Jun Yi Dou

Bob Bruyn

Eefje Habraken

Maija Reinikainen

Babette van den Berg

Melanie Broers

Tobias Staub

Sarah Decamps

Robin Veldman

Viola

Anne Huser

Roman Spitzer

Galahad Samson

Musicians

José Moura Nunes

Kerstin Bonk

Janine Baller

Veronika Lénártová

Rosalinde Kluck

León van den Berg

Olfje van der Klein

Jan Navarro

Cello

Emanuele Silvestri

Gustaw Bafeltowski

Joanna Pachucka

Daniel Petrovitsch

Mario Rio

Eelco Beinema

Carla Schrijner

Pepijn Meeuws

Yi-Ting Fang

Killian White

Paul Stavridis

Double Bass

Matthew Midgley

Ying Lai Green

Jonathan Focquaert

Arjen Leendertz

Ricardo Neto

Javier Clemen Martínez

Marta Fossas Mallorqui

Mario Fernández

Flute

Juliette Hurel

Joséphine Olech

Manon Gayet

Flute/Piccolo

Beatriz Baião

Oboe

Karel Schoofs

Anja van der Maten

Oboe/Cor Anglais

Ron Tijhuis

Clarinet

Julien Hervé

Bruno Bonansea

Alberto Sánchez García

Clarinet/ Bass Clarinet

Romke-Jan Wijmenga

Bassoon

Pieter Nuytten

Lola Descours

Marianne Prommel

Horn

David Fernández Alonso

Felipe Freitas

Wendy Leliveld

Richard Speetjens

Laurens Otto

Pierre Buizer

Trumpet

Alex Elia

Adrián Martínez

Simon Wierenga

Giovanni Giardinella

Trombone

Pierre Volders

Alexander Verbeek

Remko de Jager

Bass trombone

Rommert Groenhof

Tuba

Martijn van Rijswijk

Timpani/ Percussion

Danny van de Wal

Ronald Ent

Martijn Boom

Jesús Iberti Rubira

Harp Albane Baron