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Augustin Hadelich, violin

Hadelich Performs Brahms Violin Concerto

The Philadelphia Orchestra Augustin Hadelich, violin
Orchestral Series
Saturday, July 11, 2026 at 6pm Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater
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Renowned violinist—and Bravo! Vail favorite—Augustin Hadelich joins The Philadelphia Orchestra in Brahms’ Violin Concerto, led by Nézet-Séguin. Also on the program is Jennifer Higdon’s Concerto for Orchestra, a virtuosic work first commissioned by the Orchestra for its centennial. 

 

PLEASE NOTE: There is no late seating for this concert. Late attendees will be held until an approved time in between pieces as designated by our orchestra partners. Please plan to arrive early. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding. 

Program Highlights

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor
Augustin Hadelich, violin

BRAHMS Violin Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra
JENNIFER HIGDON Concerto for Orchestra

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Pre-Concert Talk: Join us at 5:10 PM in the Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater Main Lobby for a preconcert lecture.

All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Program Notes

HADELICH PERFORMS BRAHMS VIOLIN CONCERTO

Saturday, 6 PM

Concerto in D major for Violin and Orchestra, Op. 77 (1878-79) JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-97)

Johannes Brahms was not a 
violinist himself, but as a pianist 
he had worked as an accompanist 
to violinists since the earliest 
years of his career. He had the 
good fortune to number among his 
closest friends Joseph Joachim, one 
of the most eminent string players 
of his time. Brahms consulted with 
him closely while writing his Violin 
Concerto, and there is no question that 
Joachim’s influence on the final state 
of the violin part, and on the work’s 
orchestration overall, was substantial. 
It is hard not to think that Joachim’s 
influence also extended to introducing 
Brahms to Max Bruch’s celebrated 
First Violin Concerto of 1866; it so 
strikingly prefigures passages in 
Brahms’ concerto that many music
lovers assume that Bruch was copying 
Brahms—though, in fact, the influence 
flowed in the other direction.

Brahms spent the summer of 
1878—the summer of the Violin 
Concerto—in Pörtschach, on the 
north shore of the Wörthersee in 
the southern Austrian province of 
Carinthia. When he wrote his Second 
Symphony there the summer before, 
he had remarked that beautiful 
melodies so littered the landscape 
that one merely had to scoop them 
up. Listeners today are likely to think 
that he scooped up quite a few for his 
Violin Concerto, too, but early listeners 
weren’t so sure. Critics were at best 
cool and at worst savage. When it was 
presented by the Berlin Conservatory 
Orchestra, one newspaper complained 
that students should not be 
subjected to such “trash,” and Joseph 
Hellmesberger, Sr., who as one of 
Vienna’s leading violinists had much 
Brahmsian experience, dismissed it as 
“a concerto not for, but against 
the violin.” Brahms was a bit 
discouraged by the response and, 
to the regret of posterity, fed to the 
flames the draft he had already 
completed for his Violin Concerto No. 
2. We can only mourn what must have 
been lost.

The opening movement is a 
complex and demanding expanse, 
subtle in its orchestration, brainy in its 
rhythmic interweaving, occasionally 
forbidding in its stern outbursts. 
Granitic magnificence inhabits these 
pages. Brahms does not seem bent 
on concealing their difficulties, 
and even a listener who has never 
held a violin will have no trouble 
appreciating the exorbitant level of 
technical and intellectual challenge 
involved. The second movement is 
a good deal more friendly, opening 
with a gorgeous melody entrusted to 
the solo oboe. The third movement 
reflects Brahms’ affection for what 
was conveyed in Viennese cafes as 
“Hungarian Gypsy music,” by turns 
mournful, sentimental, and energetic. 
Joachim had grown up in Budapest 
(actually in Pest, since consolidated 
Budapest was not created until some 
decades later). “You have beat me on 
my own turf,” he once wrote to Brahms 
on this matter.

 

© James M. Keller

Concerto for Orchestra (2002) JENNIFER HIGDON (B. 1962)

Although she has written many 
choral and solo-vocal pieces, not to 
mention her opera, Cold Mountain, 
Jennifer Higdon has been principally 
an instrumental composer. Her 
teacher George Crumb acknowledged 
specific qualities that go the heart 
of her music: its “rhythmic vitality, 
interesting coloration, and sensitivity 
to nuance and timbre”—to which one 
might add immediacy of contact, a 
genial and sincere desire to connect 
with the listener. 


Her orchestral catalogue includes 
a dozen concertos, featuring Oboe, 
Trombone, Percussion, Piano, String 
Trio, Violin (it earned her the 2010 
Pulitzer Prize in Music), Viola, Tuba, 
Harp, and Low Brass. Her Concerto 
for Orchestra, commissioned and 
premiered in 2002 by The Philadelphia 
Orchestra, preceded all of these; she 
described it as “truly a concerto in that 
it requires virtuosity from the principal 
players, the individual sections, and 
the entire orchestra.”


“Surprisingly,” she says, “the 
first movement was the last to be 
composed. It took writing the other 
four movements to create a clear 
picture of what was needed to 
start this virtuosic tour-de-force. 
The opening of the piece begins 
with chimes and timpani, sounding 
together, and then a quick entrance by 
the strings in energetic scale patterns 
(octatonic) .... This movement is 
primarily tutti in its use of instruments, 
but there are small chamber moments, 
in recognition of the fact that it takes 
many individuals to make the whole of 
the orchestra.”


“The second movement,” she 
stated, “was ... inspired by the string 
sound of The Philadelphia Orchestra. 
This movement is like a scherzo in 
character, written in a jaunty rhythm 
and tempo that celebrates the joyous 
sound of strings.” The third movement 
was the first to be written. “It is the 
movement that allows each principal 
player a solo, before moving into 
section soli. The winds are highlighted 
first, which are followed (after a tutti) 
by the strings, and then the brass.”


“The fourth movement is a tribute 
to rhythm and the percussion section 
of the orchestra (harp, celesta, and 
piano are included in this movement). 
... [It] highlights the one section of the 
orchestra that has had the greatest 
amount of development during the 
20th century. Ironically, the opening 
of this movement is the quietest and 
stillest part of the entire work, which 
is not what one might expect from 
percussion.” In the fifth movement, 
“the various sections of the orchestra 
converse in musical interplay 
throughout, while the tempo continues 
to increase. ... A primary theme that 
is stated within the first minute of the 
movement will eventually come back in 
rhythmic values that are twice as long, 
but with the increased tempo, it will 
sound like it did at its first appearance.”

© James M. Keller

Artist Biographies

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Photo Credit: George Etheredge

Augustin Hadelich

Photo Credit: Rosalie O'Connor
Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater

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