# Brahms 4th Symphony



## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

What an incredible piece of music but the last two or three minutes of the last movement are something else. How important is this symphony, would you put it alongside Beethoven and Schubert? Or even Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Bruckner?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

My personal opinion: one of the best symphonies ever composed.

vs Beethoven: beats everything but the 6th
vs Schubert: beats everything but the 8th
vs Bruckner: beats everything but the 9th
vs Tchaikovsky: beats everything

Mahler is a different level though, with 4,9,6,2 (and if we count it as a symphony Das Lied von der Erde) ranking higher for me.


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## jdec (Mar 23, 2013)

Most definitely in the top 10 super symphonies for me.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

The Fourth is generally considered to be Brahms greatest work, and it was tremendously influential.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

beetzart said:


> What an incredible piece of music but the last two or three minutes of the last movement are something else. How important is this symphony, would you put it alongside Beethoven and Schubert? Or even Mahler, Tchaikovsky, and Bruckner?


I simply call the Brahms Fourth Symphony the greatest symphony ever written. Brings us right to the edge of the apocalypse at its final coda.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

hpowders said:


> I simply call the Brahms Fourth Symphony the greatest symphony ever written. Brings us right to the edge of the apocalypse at its final coda.


And Tchaikovsky's last Symphony does something similar. I am always amused by that commanality despite the fact that they detested each other


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

I have many different recordings of the 4th (Celibidache, Furtwangler, Jochum, Klemperer, Mengelberg, Toscanini, Walter, Wand and others) and it is a very special work.


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## Tchaikov6 (Mar 30, 2016)

I would rank Beethoven 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 9 above Brahms 4, and then above everything by Schubert. I would rank it above everything by Bruckner, then I would rank Tchaikovsky 2,4,6 above it. Mahler I would rank 1-5 above it. Still a great symphony.


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## Bill Cooke (May 20, 2017)

I would not dismiss anyone calling this their favorite symphony or the "greatest" symphony. It's a masterpiece that I feel compelled to listen to often, but a lot of that has to do with my predilection for dramatically tragic music. I'm always amazed at how Brahms draws me in with just the first few notes. Once drawn in, I must listen until the last. And that final movement... well, it's hard to think of many other pieces that have had the same spiritual impact on me. Maybe Mahler 6.

My reference recordings are: Walter/CSO, Kleiber/WP and Karajan/Philharmonia. I know I'm supposed to like the Kleiber the best, but I find the EMI Karajan to have just the right mixture of intensity and subtlety.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Triplets said:


> *The Fourth is generally considered to be Brahms greatest work*, and it was tremendously influential.


I doubt that TBH, and how would anyone know anyway?

I like the 4th but some of the praise it's getting here seems a little extravagant to me.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Triplets said:


> And Tchaikovsky's last Symphony does something similar. I am always amused by that commanality despite the fact that they detested each other


Yes. The final measures of Tchaikovsky's Sixth, as far as I'm concerned, are groans set to music. What a tortured soul!


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

Like the first movement only for its harmonic and rhythmic development. The orchestration sounds boring to me. 60 years after Beethoven's Symphony 9 and there was zero progress in colour and timbre.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Bill Cooke said:


> I would not dismiss anyone calling this their favorite symphony or the "greatest" symphony. It's a masterpiece that I feel compelled to listen to often, but a lot of that has to do with my predilection for dramatically tragic music. I'm always amazed at how Brahms draws me in with just the first few notes. Once drawn in, I must listen until the last. And that final movement... well, it's hard to think of many other pieces that have had the same spiritual impact on me. Maybe Mahler 6.
> 
> My reference recordings are: Walter/CSO, Kleiber/WP and Karajan/Philharmonia. I know I'm supposed to like the Kleiber the best, but I find the EMI Karajan to have just the right mixture of intensity and subtlety.


I know it's supposed to be tragic, but in fact I've rarely had that feeling from the music, certainly not from Walter or Kleiber - I've never heard Karajan, The chaconne sounds cheerful most of the time to me. I've never felt anything remotely like this



hpowders said:


> Brings us right to the edge of the apocalypse at its final coda.


I guess I don't have the right genes for it!

The one exception is one of Furtwangler's recordings.

I like Kleiber very much by the way, tragic or not!


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Phil loves classical said:


> Like the first movement only for its harmonic and rhythmic development. The orchestration sounds boring to me. 60 years after Beethoven's Symphony 9 and there was zero progress in colour and timbre.


This feels right to me, though I've not done the work to support it. Brahms 1 seems the bolder piece of music to me especially in the first movement.


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## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Phil loves classical said:


> Like the first movement only for its harmonic and rhythmic development. The orchestration sounds boring to me. 60 years after Beethoven's Symphony 9 and there was zero progress in colour and timbre.


I disagree with you. The orchestration is flawless.


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## AfterHours (Mar 27, 2017)

From the first notes to the last, Brahms' 4th is one of the greatest symphonies ever written. A flat out masterpiece of emotional duality/ambiguity and cyclic form. I would rank it above most of Beethoven's and Schubert's symphonies -- except either 9th, and equal to Beethoven's 5th.

Top 50 Symphonies:

1. Symphony No. 9 in D Minor "Choral" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1824) 
2. Symphony No. 9 in D Major - Gustav Mahler (1910) 
3. Symphony No. 9 in C Major "The Great" - Franz Schubert (1826)
4. Symphony No. 15 in A Major - Dmitri Shostakovich (1971)
5. Symphony No. 5 in C Minor - Ludwig van Beethoven (1808) 
*6. Symphony No. 4 in E Minor - Johannes Brahms (1884)*
7. Symphony No. 9 in E Minor "From the New World" - Antonin Dvorak (1893) 
8. Symphonie Fantastique - Hector Berlioz (1830) 
9. Symphony No. 41 in C Major - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1788) 
10. Symphony No. 5 - Gustav Mahler (1902) 
11. Symphony in D Minor - Cesar Franck (1888) 
12. Symphony No. 8 in B Minor "Unfinished" - Franz Schubert (1822) 
13. Symphony No. 3 in F Major - Johannes Brahms (1883) 
14. Symphony No. 4 - Charles Ives (1924) 
15. Turangalila Symphony - Olivier Messiaen (1948) 
16. Symphony No. 3 in E-flat Major "Eroica" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1804) 
17. Symphony No. 5 in B-flat - Sergei Prokofiev (1944) 
18. Symphony No. 6 in B Minor "Pathetique" - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1893) 
19. Symphony No. 2 in D Major - Jean Sibelius (1902) 
20. Symphony No. 8 in C Minor - Anton Bruckner (1892) 
21. Symphony No. 2 in D Major - Johannes Brahms (1877) 
22. Symphony No. 4 in F Minor - Peter Ilyitch Tchaikovsky (1878) 
23. Symphony No. 1 in C Minor - Johannes Brahms (1876)
24. Symphony No. 6 in F Major "Pastoral" - Ludwig van Beethoven (1808) 
25. Symphony No. 8 - Alfred Schnittke (1994) 
26. Symphony No. 40 in G minor - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1788) 
27. Symphony No. 7 in C Major "Leningrad" - Dmitri Shostakovich (1940) 
28. Symphony No. 7 in A Major - Ludwig van Beethoven (1812) 
29. Symphony No. 3 in C Minor "Organ" - Camille Saint-Saens (1886) 
30. Symphony No. 10 in E Minor - Dmitri Shostakovich (circa 1951-1953) 
31. Symphony No. 4 "The Poem of Ecstasy" - Alexander Scriabin (1908) 
32. Sinfonia da Requiem - Benjamin Britten (1940)
33. Symphony No. 39 in E-flat Major - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1788) 
34. Symphony No. 1 - Alfred Schnittke (1974) 
35. Symphony No. 38 in D major - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1786)
36. Symphony: Mathis der Maler - Paul Hindemith (1934) 
37. Faust Symphony - Franz Liszt (1857) 
38. Symphony of Three Orchestras - Elliot Carter (1976) 
39. Symphony No. 3 - Witold Lutoslawski (1983) 
40. Symphony No. 11 For Six Percussionists And Orchestra - Kalevi Aho (1998) 
41. Symphony No. 3 "Liturgique" - Arthur Honegger (1946) 
42. Symphony No. 4 in D minor - Robert Schumann (1841; 1851) 
43. Sinfonia - Luciano Berio (1969) 
44. Symphony No. 5 in E Minor - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1888) 
45. Symphony No. 8 in E flat major "Symphony Of A Thousand" - Gustav Mahler (1906) 
46. Symphony No. 5 - Carl Neilsen (1922) 
47. Symphony No. 2 in C minor "Resurrection" - Gustav Mahler (1894) 
48. Symphony No. 6 in A minor "Tragic" - Gustav Mahler (1904; 1906)
49. Symphony No. 2 "The Age of Anxiety" - Leonard Bernstein (1949) 
50. Symphony No. 3 "Symphony of Sorrowful Songs" - Henryk Gorecki (1976)


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I thought I knew it well, then a bunch of years ago I was walking through a college student union and out of sight, upstairs, a student was playing a transcription of it on a public piano. I listened enraptured to the end of the first movement, because it's easy to lose sight of the harmonic adventures Brahms undertakes that are partially masked by the orchestration. I would recommend the experience to anyone.


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

My dad was no fan of classical music. I played the first movement for him one day. Just into a few bars, he said "This is something dignifiedly beautiful!", and attentively listened to the rest.


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## DeepR (Apr 13, 2012)

So far I haven't had much luck with Brahm's music in general, but I'll give this another go. In fact I'll make it my listening project in the coming weeks.


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## Judith (Nov 11, 2015)

Love this symphony. I don't know if it's me but think the style is a slightly different to the other symphonies especially beginning of first movement, seems to have a gentler entrance into the movement.


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## Tallisman (May 7, 2017)

I like Brahms' 1st just as much. I don't think I can name two other symphonies that are so compact and yet perfect in conception as Brahms' 1st and 4th. He tried his hand 4 times at the symphony and nailed it with such ease.


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

Bill Cooke said:


> I would not dismiss anyone calling this their favorite symphony or the "greatest" symphony. It's a masterpiece that I feel compelled to listen to often, but a lot of that has to do with my predilection for dramatically tragic music. I'm always amazed at how Brahms draws me in with just the first few notes. Once drawn in, I must listen until the last. And that final movement... well, it's hard to think of many other pieces that have had the same spiritual impact on me. Maybe Mahler 6.
> 
> My reference recordings are: Walter/CSO, Kleiber/WP and Karajan/Philharmonia. I know I'm supposed to like the Kleiber the best, but I find the EMI Karajan to have just the right mixture of intensity and subtlety.


No reason that you have to prefer Kleiber, although that is a good performance. My two favorites are Klemperer with the Philharmonia and my favorite Brahms cycle of all, Kurt Sanderling and the Dresden Staatkapelle


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## beetzart (Dec 30, 2009)

I sometimes feel that Schumann's four symphonies are that good they are off the scale, then I just realise that, as good as they are, they are the warm up act for Brahms' four.


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## Omicron9 (Oct 13, 2016)

Mandryka said:


> This feels right to me, though I've not done the work to support it. Brahms 1 seems the bolder piece of music to me especially in the first movement.


I concur. I like Brahms 4, but the opening of Brahms 1, that first section with the tympani and pedal point in the basses with everything rising out of that.... for me, THAT passage is the highest intensity Brahms. Just wrecks me every time I hear it.


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## Botschaft (Aug 4, 2017)

DeepR said:


> So far I haven't had much luck with Brahm's music in general, but I'll give this another go. In fact I'll make it my listening project in the coming weeks.


Make sure to listen to this HIP recording. The middle movements are by far the best I've heard.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Oh geez, all the ranking and comparing. Is it better than Tchaikovsky's 6th or Beethoven's Eroica or Mahler's Sixth? Wrong question and who cares? It is a world unto itself and we would be poorer without it. I think Brahms's Fourth is magnificent, especially the first movement with its kaleidoscopic treatment of its motives and the way by the end every phrase seems laden with import. Genius and consummate craftsmanship throughout.


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## Brahmsian Colors (Sep 16, 2016)

Brahms is my co-favorite composer (along with Haydn), but I've never really concerned myself with which of his symphonies is the greatest, nor can I offer a decent explanation as to what "the greatest" means. I also have never truly enjoyed the last movement of his Fourth Symphony. Rather, I've always preferred the first and second movements. As favorites go, I get the most satisfaction from the Third Symphony, followed by the First, Second and Fourth, which in comparison to each other give me about equal pleasure.


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