With his Violin Concerto Brahms was often accused of having embedded the solo violin too deeply within the orchestra. When looking at his two piano concertos, his intention seems to have been rather to write symphonic concertos as virtuoso solo pieces with orchestral accompaniment. “Because of the dialogues in the orchestra between violin and wind instruments and the accompanying figures of the solo violin, the concert seems to me rather like a piece of chamber music”, says Emilio Percan, who decided to record the Violin Concerto without a conductor. The matter of instrumentation is crucial in this context. The perfect example for Percan is the Meininger Hofkapelle, which premiered many of Brahms’ pieces and played with almost half the number of violins as other orchestras of the time (and of today!).

Brahms, however, had an exact idea of how the orchestral arrangement should look like for his pieces. For the performance of one of his symphonies in Boston, he was to sketch the desired set-up and made a drawing which was the model for the present recording. The result is a completely new listening experience which brings both the Violin Concerto and the Third Symphony closer to chamber music, thereby allowing hitherto unknown aspects of the music to arise.