Anima Eterna - Jos van Immerseel

Anima Eterna has for about ten years been one of Europe's leading orchestras in the performance of eighteenth and nineteenth-century music on period instruments. It is increasingly concentrating on music from the nineteenth century: it has for example performed the symphonies of Schubert and Beethoven, as well as music from the middle and even the second half of that century. This year they are devoting all their attention to Brahms. If there is one composer who would benefit from a radical approach on period instruments, it is Brahms. It will undoubtedly become clear that his music does not correspond to the cliche of 'the old man with a beard', which is the generally accepted picture of Brahms - as if he had written mainly serious, stiff and rather inaccessible music, whereas the opposite is true. Brahms' music brims with dynamism and, if played with the necessary punch and panache, can be extraordinarily compelling. Since Jos van Immerseel and Anima Eterna are keen to give it this panache, this promises to be an irresistibly romantic evening, with more than one welcome rediscovery in a repertoire everyone thought they knew. The First Symphony has been reconstructed with its original vividness and the form of orchestra Brahms preferred. In the First Piano Concerto Alexei Lubimov plays an original 1870 Bechstein grand.