By Hugh Robertson

There are some great works of art whose power has almost been diluted by ubiquity. Everyone can quote Casablanca or Citizen Kane; everyone can see the Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel on their phones at any time; Shakespeare and Austen are so well-known you almost forget how great they are – but when you encounter these great works in person, their extraordinary quality is revealed to you yet again.

To this list of the great works of art, James Ehnes would like to add the Violin Concerto by Johannes Brahms. Written in 1878 it remains one of the cornerstones of orchestral repertoire, a towering work of bold, triumphant Romanticism rarely absent from any major orchestra’s season for more than a couple of years at a time. But perhaps because of its 150 years at the very pinnacle of the genre, it can sometimes be viewed as slightly old hat. Not so for Ehnes.

‘There are these things in in art where it's like, “Why is this famous?” And then you experience it and you’re like, “oh, yeah…”

‘It's one of the reasons that I play the violin,’ says Ehnes. ‘I think if it were the only piece written for the violin, it would still be a good reason to play the violin.

What can you say about the piece? It's hard not to think of it as something perfect because it's just so astonishing in its impact.

Ehnes is speaking to me via a video call from his accommodation in Auckland, where the acclaimed Canadian violinist is on the first leg of a months-long antipodean tour. He has been a regular visitor to Sydney throughout a celebrated career that has seen him awarded two Grammys, two Gramophone Classical Music Awards and eleven Junos (Canada’s equivalent to the ARIA Awards), performing concertos by Elgar, Prokofiev, Beethoven and Khachaturian, as well as performances of Tchaikovsky and Vivaldi that were recorded and released as an album.

Incredibly, however, we have never heard him perform Brahms – something Ehnes is excited to finally rectify in March.

‘I have spent my life thinking of how to tell this story,’ says Ehnes.

‘When I learned the piece as a boy, how I got to know it was on an LP where the first movement was side A and the second or third movements were side B – and I was so overwhelmed by the first movement that it took me a very long time to even flip the record over!

‘I think it's a very emotional piece of music… it has a very significant emotional impact. It's very beautiful, but also very intense at times.

‘There are a lot of violin concerti out there that are fantastic, and have something valuable to say, and communicate a powerful message – but I think there are few that are such an experience as the Brahms concerto

As a listener you come out of it feeling like you've been on an incredible journey and sort of seen a lot of life.

‘It is a piece of great beauty, of great range of emotion. It's a big experience and I think people should be prepared for that. I have absolutely nothing against lighter music, I think it’s wonderful. This just isn't one of those pieces. This is a piece that I think packs a real punch.

‘It's got everything. It's got wonderful orchestral writing. It's got great orchestral solos – of course, the famous oboe melody that rivals anything the violin gets to do. But it exploits the violin in all the best ways. It takes advantage of the violin as a very lyrical and vocal instrument. It's got great virtuosity. It's got some really rip-roaring material, know, [and after] that last movement you leave the hall kind of humming it and dancing it to it in your mind.

It's got everything. It's sort of a self-contained world.

If you love musical art, it's something not to miss. It's unique within the repertoire. And like I mentioned before, it's a big experience.’

Ehnes is also in the middle of a big experience of his own, a two-month long tour of New Zealand and Australia that takes him to Auckland, Hobart, Sydney, Brisbane, Ballarat, Melbourne and Adelaide. In an era when international soloists are sometimes only in a city for a few days, this leisurely itinerary feels like a throwback to the Age of Steam, to a time when soloists and conductors would spend months touring Australia for the ABC because it was the only way to justify the length of the journey to get here.

For Ehnes, this plan began to take shape on his last visit to Sydney, in 2022, walking around North Head with his wife and talking about how much they love it here.

‘I feel very lucky to have been doing this for pretty long time,’ says Ehnes. ‘And I think that the measure of success in this business is feeling like you have a bit of control over what you do. It can be very transactional, but then to develop relationships and to have the opportunity to get to understand the regions that mean a lot to you, and then to be able to actually spend significant amounts of time there, that feels like success to me.

‘And I'm very grateful to the Sydney Symphony and the other organisations on this trip to help me coordinate that. So I think that these performances, I think I'm going to be really feeling a particular sense of gratitude that I'm able to come and you share these incredible musical masterpieces, but also to have the experience of being in this wonderful part of the world for a significant stretch of time. And I'm really excited.

‘You know, technically our plane tickets go back to America on the 20th of April, but you know, mean, hey, maybe we just miss that flight. Who knows, right?’