Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
November 25, 2018

The dramatic opening of Brahms’s First Symphony, underpinned by thundering heartbeat from the timpani, ushered in a thrilling concert by maestro Daniel Barenboim – his first appearance in Australia since 1970 – and his Staatskapelle Berlin on Sunday night. The concert was the first of three at the Sydney Opera House in which the conductor presents a complete Brahms Symphony cycle, before rounding out the run with Beethoven’s Eroica and Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony on Tuesday. This concert more than proved that the audience is in good hands for the journey, Barenboim and the Staatskapelle giving a masterful performance highlighting the different personalities of Brahms’s first two symphonies.

Daniel Barenboim conducting the Staatskapelle Berlin at the Sydney Opera House. Photo © Peter Adamik

While this first program was advertised as starting with the Second, Brahms’s First Symphony – which had a famously difficult birth, the composer agonising over the long shadow cast by Beethoven’s Ninth – was a powerful, and apt, work with which to kick off the cycle. With antiphonal violins and eight double basses arrayed across the back wall, Barenboim drew a...