Johannes Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 4

Recently awarded the prestigious Brahms Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society, Kent Nagano and the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, of which he was principal conductor from 2015 until 2025, perform the last two symphonies by the Hamburg-born composer, recorded in concert.

The most personal of Johannes Brahms’s four symphonies, the Third is both heroic and deeply troubled; moreover, all four movements end quietly. After the heroism of the First Symphony and the pastoral flavors of the Second, the Third Symphony reveals Brahms at a crossroads: the youthful impulses are now reined in, and the mood is more one of profound reflection on life and death. The theme of the slow movement has been adapted many times and even sung by Frank Sinatra under the title of ‘Take My Love’.

The Fourth Symphony might be described as the most classical of Brahms’s symphonies, not least because of its chaconne finale, a variation form inherited from the baroque era. Described as an ‘autumn symphony’ or ‘elegiac’, its mood is sometimes tormented and fiery, sometimes harsh and solitary. The culmination of a genre that cost him so much effort, the Fourth is the last word of Brahms the symphonist; he would never compose another work of this kind.