Brahms: Symphonies Nos.3 & 4

With this release, Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra bring to a close their acclaimed Brahms cycle. Brahms is often associated with the idea of abstract music, free of programmatic content. However, the Symphony No.3 is in many ways his most personal symphony. Brahms was a fifty-year-old bachelor who declared himself to be Frei aber froh, 'Free but Happy.' A motto comprising the notes F-A-F can be heard throughout the work. His Symphony No.4, composed at a mountain retreat in 1884, employs sophisticated Baroque contrapuntal and harmonic techniques and modal harmonies.