‘While it’s possibly the most difficult concerto ever written,’ remarked Yefim Bronfman of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto in a 2011 interview, ‘it mustn’t sound that way. The audience should feel that it’s being handled with relative ease. It has to sound natural and beautiful. There’s also a danger that the first and second movements risk sounding similar. They often do when they are performed, when they shouldn’t: the first is this majestic 20-minute tour de force, while the second is much more passionate.’ This Philharmonia concert in Vienna counterbalanced the monumental Brahms with lighter-textured Birtwistle and Mendelssohn.