fortyfivedownstairs Chamber Music Festival 2026: Brahms, Liszt & Mendelssohn – Hungarian Fire and Italian Light

Performers Josephine Vains (cello), Sofija Kirsanova (violin), Coady Green (piano), and Ricardo Roche Idini (piano) combine forces in this expansive celebration of Romantic colour, vitality, and collective virtuosity. The program begins with the complete set of 21 Hungarian Dances by Johannes Brahms. Arranged for piano four hands, violin and cello, and overflowing with melodic buoyancy, rhythmic bite and emotional depth, these dances remain among Brahms’s most captivating works. This is followed by Franz Liszt’s blazingly virtuosic Hungarian Rhapsody, also arranged for piano four hands with strings, and an arrangement of Felix Mendelssohn’s exuberant Symphony No. 4, the Italian, whose sunlit energy and lyrical sweep bring the concert to a jubilant close.