Brahms’s sunny Second Symphony is as warm and lyrical as his First had been stormy and dramatic. It quite possibly reflects the idyllic nature around Lake Wörth in Austria, where Brahms composed it in the summer of 1877. Brahms himself, however, called attention to the melancholy current that undermines the pastoral serenity (“You’ve never heard anything as world-weary as this”, he wrote to his friend Schubring). Despite the apparent simplicity of the symphonic writing, the work is strengthened and enriched by many thematic threads that run from one movement to another. It has been a special favorite among music lovers since its premiere in Vienna on 30 December 1877. The celebrated 19th-century music critic Eduard Hanslick wrote that it was for “all who long for good music, whether they understand its complexity or not”. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.

A particularly mellow, burnished glow radiates from Brahms’s F major Symphony. The work was written chiefly in Wiesbaden, where Brahms spent the summer of 1883. He had just turned fifty – and had possibly fallen in love with the much younger singer Hermine Spiess, who happened to live in Wiesbaden. Like most of his symphonies, the Third is also permeated by a melodic motto. This one consists of three notes which not only open the symphony but are frequently woven into its texture and return with dramatic emphasis at crucial moments in the later movements. The unexpectedly quiet close of the Third sets it off against the previous two symphonies and calms the electrifying tension of all four movements before reaching a tension-releasing “transfiguration” (Clara Schumann). Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.

Composed during the summer months of the years 1884 and 1885 in Mürzzuschlag, southwest of Vienna, the Fourth Symphony tended to disconcert the public at first and had to prove itself in the concert circuit before gaining recognition as a masterwork of epoch-making stature. What Brahms’s contemporaries regarded as difficult and bewildering were above all the extreme constructive density of the score, the unusual layout, especially of the third and fourth movements, a number of archaic elements pointing back to the formulae and techniques of “early music” (the passacaglia in the fourth movement) and the austere, elegiac mood that permeates the entire work. The premiere of the Fourth Symphony performed by the Meiningen Court Orchestra in Meiningen under Brahms’s direction on 25 October 1885 was a great success. The work became the chief feature of the orchestra’s ensuing tour, with Brahms conducting it in nine cities. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.

“A merry medley of student songs à la Suppé” is how Johannes Brahms characterized his Academic Festival Overture, which he wrote in 1880 as a musical “thank-you note” for the honorary degree conferred upon him by the University of Breslau in 1879. The overture focuses on four traditional German student songs, which are integrated with subtly related themes of Brahms’ own invention. The first student tune, “Wir hatten gebauet ein stattliches Haus”, is a nostalgic lament for the glorious days of the student associations or “Burschenschaften”. The next two songs are the “Hochfeierlicher Landesvater” and the initiation song “Fuchsenritt”. After a brief development, the principal themes are reprised and merge into an exhilarating coda built on the joyous “Gaudeamus igitur”. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.

Just like the Serenade No. 1, its companion piece Op. 16 was also written in the little princely residence town of Detmold chiefly in the summers of 1858 and 1859. Brahms, then a young man in his mid 20s, enjoyed the summers he spent there in the employ of the princely family, and the result was works marked by a filigree lightness and a dancing lilt. They are both gentle scores, so modest in physical volume of sound, so tender, idyllic in mood that they suggest a conscious reaction against the monumentalism of their immediate predecessor, the Piano Concerto in D minor. Brahms enjoyed his Serenade No. 2 and wrote: “I felt absolutely blissful… I have rarely composed with such exhilaration – the music flowed so sweetly and gently inside me that I was filled with joy through and through.” The work was premiered in Hamburg on 10 February 1860. It was performed in New York by the New York Philharmonic two years later, on 1 February 1862. Between 1981 and 1984, Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms’s orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth in 1983. Today, the cycle is considered as a landmark in the interpretation of Brahms’ music. Bernstein and the Vienna Philharmonic have underscored both the classicism and romanticism, the dramatic intensity and the sober restraint of Brahms’s music. The venue was Vienna’s Musikvereinssaal, where two of Brahms’s symphonies were premiered and where Brahms himself conducted. In his introductions, Bernstein speaks with an eloquence and conviction that go far beyond the opening words to a traditional concert performance. With his stimulating theories on Brahms and his music, Bernstein prompts viewers to listen to the music with an open mind.