Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98

Program notes

About the Work

Brahms’s Fourth is his last symphony and, for many, his greatest, a work of autumnal grandeur and tragic power that crowns the symphonic tradition he had inherited from Beethoven and carried forward. He wrote it in 1884 and 1885 at Mürzzuschlag in the Austrian Alps, and conducted the premiere himself in October 1885 with the famous court orchestra of Meiningen. Beforehand he tried it out on close friends in a two-piano arrangement, unsure whether it was worth an orchestra, but it was warmly received and its stature was soon recognised, and it is now seen as the summit of his art.

What sets the Fourth apart is its combination of deep feeling with extraordinary craftsmanship, nowhere more than in its astonishing finale. There Brahms looked back to the Baroque, building the entire movement as a passacaglia (or chaconne): a set of some thirty variations over a constantly repeating bass theme, adapted from a Bach cantata. It is the only one of his four symphonies to end in the minor, refusing the expected triumphant resolution and instead driving to a close of tragic, inexorable force. The whole symphony has an air of valediction: the work of a master looking back over the tradition and his own life. Yet it is also music of tremendous energy, warmth and beauty.

What to Listen For

The first movement opens with one of Brahms’s most beautiful and immediately affecting themes: a gently falling, sighing melody in the violins that seems to begin in mid-thought. Listen for its autumnal lyricism, and for how Brahms builds from it a movement of great sweep and, by the end, tragic power.

The second movement (Andante) opens with a haunting, archaic-sounding horn call and unfolds as a noble, song-like meditation. The third movement is the surprise: a genuine boisterous scherzo (rare for Brahms), brilliant and exuberant, with triangle and piccolo adding sparkle: a burst of almost rowdy energy. Then comes the extraordinary finale: listen for the stern theme stated at the very start by the wind and brass, and then for how Brahms repeats its bass pattern over and over, some thirty times, building an ever-changing set of variations above it. Listen for the desolate central section with its great flute solo, and for the way the music gathers itself and drives, with mounting intensity, to a shattering close in the minor, one of the most powerful and uncompromising endings in all of symphonic music.