The violin is the ideal voice for Johannes Brahms' music. It can convey all the emotion and chisel its transparent sonorities. Emmanuel Tjeknavorian is well aware of this since he made a name for himself worldwide as an extraordinary soloist with his 1698 Stradivarius before devoting himself entirely to conducting. It was precisely as a soloist that he was valued last season. Despite his young age, Tjeknavorian (born in 1995) is a complete musician who shares his time between conducting and numerous music outreach projects. He also still makes a few exceptional appearances as a violinist.

“Brahms is one of the composers who are daily in my head, my heart and my ears. I have never performed any other composer so often. Brahms has become a model for the artist I am because he managed to find the right relationship between emotion and rationality in his works. With Brahms, both the intellect and the heart are deeply contented,” said Tjeknavorian when his latest recording was released.

The musician approached the Romantic composer's symphonic music from the side, first choosing works with a more restrained scope than the more performed and famous four symphonies. Brahms himself undoubtedly believed he had rediscovered an ancient treasure when the Vienna Society of Friends of Music librarian showed him the manuscript of the Divertimento in B-flat major for wind ensemble attributed to Franz Joseph Haydn. Brahms loved studying and retrieving music of the past, not so much to preserve it but to discover styles, stimuli and ideas that could be proposed once again in an entirely new context. The Haydnian theme is the starting point for nine very contrasting variations: it is immersed in iridescent orchestral textures until the irresistible momentum of the finale. Immediately afterwards, Tjeknavorian takes us back to Franz Joseph Haydn's original music for wind instruments and orchestra with the Sinfonia concertante in the same key of B-flat major.