Brahms’ Fourth & Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 2 is full of passionate melodies, lush harmonies, and displays of blistering speed at the keyboard. Our soloist is George Li, who has been praised by Bachtrack for playing this piece “with a sense of discovery, as if the music were quite new.” Brahms’ final symphony shows the German composer at the height of his inventive powers. We open with an exceptionally confident work by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, written when the composer was only 23; it combines a spirit of grand adventure with passages of lilting tenderness.