Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra joins forces with violin player Matthew Trusler for its first 2016 concert.

Brighton Dome Concert Hall, Church Street, Sunday, January 31

After graduating from Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute in 1998, the violinist Matthew Trusler attracted "the kind of attention normally reserved for a young Oistrakh", according to The Independent.

It is fitting, that on Sunday afternoon at the Dome he is the soloist in Prokofiev’s First Violin Concerto, a piece closely associated with David Oistrakh himself.

Written when the composer was still in his 20s, the concerto is a perfect example of Prokofiev’s apparent spontaneity, its free flow of ideas giving the impression that the piece is being composed as we hear it.

Supported by the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra with conductor laureate Barry Wordsworth at the helm, Trusler’s performance of the concerto promises to be something rather special.

Trusler plays a 1711 Stradivarius violin and uses a bow once owned by another great virtuoso, Jascha Heifetz, which bodes well for a stunning performance of a piece in which sublime beauty and modernity, innocence and sophistication are inextricably linked.

The concert opens with Weber’s Overture from his opera Oberon, evoking the magical fairy world in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The first performance of the opera at Covent Garden in 1826 was described by Weber as "the greatest success of my life".

Sadly, he did not live long to enjoy this success, dying in London only two months after the first performance.

The final work of the concert is Brahms’ Third Symphony, the shortest but most closely argued of his four symphonies, in which the middle-aged composer appears to be taking stock and confronting his destiny with his full intellectual resources.

The use of major/light and minor/dark versions of the theme associated with the composer himself may well express the more complicated feelings of maturity.

Peter Back

Starts 2.45pm, tickets from £11.50. Call 01273 709709.