Tabita Berglund conducts Francesco Piemontesi Brahms’s First Piano Concerto

Francesco Piemontesi plays Brahms’s mighty First Piano Concerto, and conductor Tabita Berglund retells the colourful tale of Grieg’s Peer Gynt. Peer Gynt is a prankster and a rogue – a man who lives life without a thought for consequences. And everyone knows some of the wonderfully tuneful music that Grieg wrote to accompany Ibsen’s drama: Morning and In the Hall of the Mountain King are two of the most popular of all classical favourites. Our Norwegian guest conductor Tabita Berglund knows that there’s more to the story than the highlights alone, though, and tonight she conducts an extended sequence from Grieg’s gloriously inventive score. She places it in a wider Romantic context by opening with the huge, torrential First Piano Concerto by the young Brahms – for soloist Francesco Piemontesi, a composer who embodies “power and expression, without harshness; energy, but always derived from the sound”. Programme Johannes Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 Edvard Grieg Peer Gynt (selections) Performers Tabita Berglund conductor Francesco Piemontesi piano BBC Symphony Orchestra