Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 Allegro non troppo Andante Moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionato Strange things happened to the symphony during the course of the nineteenth Century. Berlioz and Liszt gave its movements literary titles and freely married it to the tone poem. Wagner in his maturity never wrote a symphony and believed that he had absorbed its essential qualities into the texture of his music dramas. The results were original and beautiful. But in Opposition to this trend arose Brahms, who feit that something important in the great tradition of music had been lost. He bent his life's work towards the restoration of what he saw as the main line, stemming from the giants of the past, and epitomised by Beethoven. A part of this task was the recreation of the symphony as a monumental, self-contained form in the classical tradition. The affecting ‘sighing’ theme, played by violins and echoed by woodwinds, that opens the first movement, Allegro non troppo, was drawn by Brahms from one of Beethoven’s most introspective works, the slow movement of the Op. 106 piano sonata. A dramatic conflict is set up by the second theme group, with its brilliant fanfares from horns and woodwinds, followed by a grand, soaring theme from the cellos. Two moods are thus put into Opposition, and Brahms alternately developsthe second theme group and the first, then moves with gathering force and power to the great climax which takes place in the very closing pages, or coda, an affirmative transformation of the reflective opening theme. By the very nature of this task, as Brahms saw it, it could not be approached lightly. An early effortturned into the massive and dramatic First Piano Concerto. Not until he was forty-three, in 1876, did he produce his First Symphony, the splendour of which caused it to be described, jokingly yet admiringly, as ‘Beethoven’s Tenth’. The following year came the more genial and lyrical Second Symphony. Six years then elapsed betöre the Third Symphony appeared, with its engaging combination of earthy, folk-style melodies and autumnal sadness. Then in 1885 came the monumental Fourth Symphony. Probably of all the four works, it best sums up what Brahms was aiming at, in turning the old great formal tradition to the deepest romantic expressive uses.