Johannes Brahms was one of the romantic period's most conflicted musical characters, and his symphonies are the perfect way to find out why... The image of Brahms the curmudgeon with his hands firmly ...

One of the best features of Tuesday’s music-making was the old-fashioned layout of the orchestra. With the violins divided and cellos, basses, and violas in the middle, they had an outsized weight and ...

BOSTON - The music or the musicians? What makes a great classical music concert? You need to have captivating music for a memorable concert. But you also need musicians performing at their peak for a ...

Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 was – and still is – an undisputed masterwork. Audiences went wild for it; critics asked whether it could ever be equalled; and frankly, composers such as Brahms wondered ...

The character of the Fourth Symphony has been described as autumnal. Even if it weren't the last of Brahms' symphonies, the description would fit, for surely none of the others presents the same ...

Stephen Johnson explores Brahms's Symphony No. 1, which took the composer around 20 years to compose. While Brahms strove to create his own unique sound, critics pounced upon it. Show more Stephen ...

Audio for this feature is no longer available. The album was released on Oct. 6, 2009. "It's an unkickable drug habit. And I'm happy to be a junkie until the end of my days." So says 54-year-old ...

Johannes Brahms is not known for his sense of humour, but his Second Symphony is downright funny. Its lilting themes and exuberant turns have given it a reputation as a "pastoral" symphony (the kind ...

Two new faces and some remarkable music: The Seattle Symphony offered inspiring performances in the first of two concerts led by conductor David Zinman. It seems odd to consider Zinman (who turns 80 ...

‘It is enormously rewarding – one of the world’s grandest bracers. What a lift in those themes, and what tenderness beneath their power! Brahms for ever!’ The Third is the most personal of Brahms’s ...

Do you like the opening of Brahms’s Third Symphony to be played with gutsy thrust and blaze and bite? If so, there’s a fair chance that you may find this new account by Iván Fischer and his Budapest ...