Kensington Symphony Orchestra returns to Smith Square Hall on Monday 16 March, when we are joined by guest conductor Matt Scott Rogers for a performance of Brahms’s Symphony No.3 (1883).

After spending the summer of 1883 writing the work at Wiesbaden, on the Rhine, Brahms played the first and final movements on the piano to Antonín Dvořák, who remarked that his fellow composer had surpassed his previous two symphonies, “if not, perhaps, in grandeur, then certainly in beauty”. Premièred by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter in December of that year,
the work was well received, with Richter proclaiming it to be Brahms’s ‘Eroica’.

We also perform Dvořák’s Cello Concerto (1894-95), which was premièred by the English cellist Leo Stern, conducted by the composer, at the Queen’s Hall in London in March 1896. The opening Allegro is followed by a lyrical Adagio, in which Dvořák pays tribute to his seriously ill sister-in-law,and a lively Finale. Having corrected Dvořák’s proofs of the work, Brahms remarked: “If I had known that it was possible to compose such a concerto for the cello, I would have tried it myself!”