Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, Edward Gardner

Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73
Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98

His First Symphony famously took Brahms twenty-one years from conception to first performance — a marker of both his own highly self-critical assessment and the expectation that his symphonic output would pick up where Beethoven had left off. Astonishingly, his Second Symphony was begun in June 1877 and premiered just six months later. Its cheerful nature and pastoral mood are a stark contrast to the first symphony. Following a gap of some six years, Brahms returned to the form in 1883, and composed his third and then fourth symphonies in quick succession. Begun in 1884, the Fourth Symphony was premiered by Brahms and the Meiningen court orchestra in October 1885. The work is especially notable for its last movement, which takes the form of a passacaglia and is the only of Brahms’s symphonies to end in a minor key.

"There's been much to admire in these Bergen performances, from which Gardner emerges as one of our age's most accomplished Brahmsians." — Gramophone, March 2025