Brahms featuring Gil Shaham

It would not be an exaggeration to describe the young English maestro Finnegan Downie Dear's 2023 debut with the ASO as truly revelatory, both for the musicians who threw themselves so willingly behind his vision and for our audience who rewarded his efforts with rapturous applause—and rightly so! Which is to say his return this year, to conduct a programme that could not be more Romantic if it tried, with all the technical demands and emotional extremes that entails, was fully merited. The American violinist Gil Shaham hardly needs an introduction: one of the greatest violinists of our time, he has treated classical music lovers to landmark performances of the great works in the repertoire, the greatest of which surely include Johannes Brahms' magnificent Violin Concerto.