The NCPA Concert Hall was packed tonight, with the NCPA Pure Classical 2025 graced by one of this year’s grandest symphony performances. Maestro Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic appeared as a “formidable duo”, giving a perfect rendition of Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major “Rhenish” and Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E Minor.

The concert began with Schumann’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major “Rhenish”. Composed in 1850, this five-movement symphony unfolded as a vivid tone picture under Thielemann’s baton, presenting the Rhine scenery and majestic Cologne Cathedral to the audience. With its typically warm timbre, the Vienna Philharmonic perfectly captured Schumann’s depiction of what the Rhine looks like at dawn, how lithesome the scherzo sounds, how the slow movement provokes thinking, and how solemn the fourth movement is.


Schumann’s “Rhenish” was followed by Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, which presented a starkly different world of music. As Brahms’ final symphony, the piece is philosophically profound and tragically impressive. All this was revealed progressively by the Vienna Philharmonic under the leadership of Thielemann. From the first movement, which boasts a pitifully sorrowful melody that develops out of simple intervals, to the final movement, where there is a piece of passacaglia themed on Bach’s cantatas, Thielemann gave a masterful interpretation of this highly demanding work through his precise control of the German-Austrian compositional structure.

Once again, the Vienna Philharmonic demonstrated its artistic excellence as one of the world’s best orchestras tonight. Its unique “golden timbre” found perfect expression in the acoustic environment of the NCPA Concert Hall in the form of mellow woodwind music, of brilliant brass music, which was not harsh at all, and of string music, which sounded as warm as velvet. Thielemann’s conducting art seemed more mature and implicative this time. As a contemporary inheritor of German-Austrian music, his profound skill was visibly presented in his overall grasp of the musical structure, precise control of the vocal balance and delicate handling of the musical tension. Amidst sustained applause from the audience, Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic gave an encore, Johann Strauss II’s The Blue Danube, showing the audience the charm of Vienna in their authentic performance.

Tomorrow night, Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic will add more brilliance to the two-day symphonic feast by interpreting Bruckner’s Symphony No. 5 in B-flat Major at the NCPA. This work, hailed as “Bruckner’s monumental masterpiece composed in the middle of his career”, is well-known for its rigorous architectural structure and intricate polyphonic techniques. In particular, the double fugue in its final movement is really a merger between the themes of the first few movements and brand-new musical materials. This reveals the composer’s unparalleled ability to grasp counterpoints. After their perfect rendition of Schumann and Brahms tonight, how will Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic interpret this towering peak of symphonic music by Bruckner? Please stay tuned.