Brahms’s First Piano Concerto

Brahms began writing his first piano concerto directly after the attempted suicide of his mentor, Robert Schumann, and completed it two years later, after Schumann’s death and with the encouragement of Clara Schumann. Almost 20 years later, in 1873, he composed his Variations on a Theme by Haydn. Both are part of this history-steeped program, which also includes the slowly pulsating Tranquil Abiding by British composer Jonathan Harvey, who died in 2012.