The Hallé with Karina Canellakis and Viviane Hagner (violin)

Two of today’s outstanding female artists join forces for this romantic central European programme. New Yorker Karina Canellakis was championed by Sir Simon Rattle and last year won the prestigious 2016 Sir Georg Solti Conducting Award, whilst Munich born violinist Viviane Hagner enjoys a reputation for assured and insightful performances allied to a serene stage presence. Brahms’s symphonically scaled and ardently lyrical concerto gives ample opportunity for all these qualities to shine.

Mendelssohn took inspiration for his 1828 overture from two poems of the same name by Goethe. Its slow introduction depicts the doleful spirits of sailors languishing in a dead calm, before a brisk wind fills the sails and carries them joyfully into port. Beethoven employs a similar strategy for the opening of his inexplicably neglected Fourth Symphony, slowly winding up the tension before releasing the energy in a pulsating first movement that sets the tone for one of Beethoven’s most affirmative compositions. It may have stood in the shadow of the Eroica and the Fifth Symphonies but it’s in the agile Fourth that the life force burns most brightly.

Free pre-concert talk, 6.30pm in the auditorium: Katy Hamilton on Brahms’s Violin Concerto