MUSIC

Expect an evening of musical opposites and emotional extremes as the Boston Philharmonic’s 2011-2012 season continues with its second concert event, led by the adventurous and passionate Maestro Benjamin Zander. Highlighting the program as concerto soloist is the first-prize winner of the 2009 Cleveland International Piano Competition, Martina Filjak, the dynamic rising star dubbed a “pianist to watch” by The New York Times.

The concert features two pieces that showcase what Maestro Zander calls the “two faces” of Johannes Brahms. The first, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, a work completed nearly thirty years prior and written at the height of his complicated yet affectionate relationship with Clara Schumann (wife of Robert), The work reflects Brahms’s effort to combine the piano with the orchestra as equal partners, unlike the show-piece concertos of earlier composers. The ghost of Beethoven (Brahms’s lifelong inspiration) looms large as the piano and orchestra alternate between brooding power, lilting folk-like melodies, and moments of harmonious triumph.

The second, Brahms 4th symphony, with its unique example of a symphonic chaconne, demonstrates Brahms’s struggle with form and function against expression. Its dark beauty is his farewell to the symphonic form.