*** This concert has now been cancelled due to the current circumstances. The performance of ‘To Breathe Now’ will be postponed until a safer time, which is yet to be announced. ***

It took Brahms 14 years to write his first symphony, but it was worth the wait. The piece launches with a compelling edifice of climbing strings, plunging winds and pounding drums. What follows is a work of gripping turbulence, deep conviction and exuberant joy. Before the Brahms, we welcome a friend and true aristocrat of the violin Maxim Vengerov to play the radiant song of love that is Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, where the weave of a single instrument floats, battles and rhapsodises against an orchestral mass that supports and cajoles. To open, the first performance of the orchestral version of the third movement of Grace-Evangeline Mason’s work ‘Upon Weightless Wings’ entitled ‘To Breathe Now’.