Brahms, Mozart, and more with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra

David Afkham makes his highly-anticipated debut with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra on February 21 and 23, with a program that highlights the music of Johannes Brahms, W.A. Mozart, and Outi Tarkiainen. 

The program opens with Tarkiainen’s The Ring of Fire and Love, an intense exploration of the moment of birth, followed by Mozart’s dramatic and adventurous Piano Concerto No. 24, K. 491, which features lauded pianist Saleem Ashkar as soloist. 

Finally, Afkham leads the orchestra through Brahms’ Symphony No. 1, a piece Afkham has conducted to great acclaim. Of his performance with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Linda Hold of Broad Street Review said it was “such a dazzling performance, I felt as though I never heard the First before. Gone was all pomposity. Instead, the structure of Brahms’ careful writing shone clear and bright, like a crystal scaffold embracing and releasing music of almost unbearable intensity.”