This concert showcases the Romantic Austro-German tradition in different lights. Premiered in London’s Royal Opera House, Oberon was Carl Maria von Weber’s swansong drawing on a verse narrative by Christoph Martin Wieland. Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy quotes several folk tunes, with the violin providing mesmerizing embellishments both lyrical and dramatic. Johannes Brahms’s Symphony No.1 has long been praised as the rightful heir to Beethoven’s symphonic output, some even referring to it as “Beethoven’s No.10.” The opening theme of Brahms’s finale movement, with its mellifluous tutti string melody, has long been labelled as a heartfelt, purely instrumental response to Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”