Johannes Brahms wrestled for many years with the idea of writing symphonies. Beethoven was both his great model and an almost paralysing presence: Brahms spoke of the feeling of having “a giant like Beethoven marching behind him”. By the time his Fourth and final Symphony was completed in 1885, he had long since found his own path within the tradition.

The first movement already reveals one of Brahms’s hallmarks: the way a simple motif can be transformed and developed into a rich musical argument. The opening, sighing movement between falling and rising notes leaves its imprint on the entire movement. After the darker, more contemplative Andante moderato comes the symphony’s most extrovert movement, energetic and powerful.

The finale is the symphony’s formal culmination. Here Brahms reaches all the way back to the Baroque, constructing a passacaglia in which a recurring theme forms the basis for some thirty variations. The theme has its origins in Johann Sebastian Bach, but in Brahms’s hands it grows into a dramatic finale of constantly shifting expression. The symphony does not end in triumph, but remains in the darkness of E minor through to its powerful final chords.