The London Symphony Orchestra’s cycle of Brahms symphonies was Bernard Haitink’s first set of recordings on the LSO Live label, originally released in 2005. This 4 Album Set of remastered recordings is now available in Stereo and 5.1 Channel Surround Sound DSD at a special price.

For a long time, the composer Johannes Brahms was regarded as the epitome of the conservative who, in contrast to the representatives of the Wagner and Liszt successors, fell back on old forms that supposedly no longer had any life.

In fact, Brahms was a profound connoisseur of the music of the past, right down to the polyphonists of the 16th century. He made use of old types of form, such as the variation and the passacaglia associated with it. He adopted the traditional four-movement structure of the classical symphony and its sequence of movements, respected the scheme of the sonata movement and hardly went beyond Beethoven in his instrumentation.

Nevertheless, the view that Brahms was a “reactionary”, as espoused by the Wagner circle from Nietzsche up to Richard Strauss, is untenable. This was seen by none other than Arnold Schoenberg, who in his famous article “Brahms, der Fortschrittliche” (Brahms, the Progressive) (1933 or 1947) recognized the fundamental difference that separates the composer, above all the symphonist Brahms, from the masters of the classical sonata and symphony.

London Symphony Orchestra
Bernard Haitink, Conductor
Gordan Nikolitch, Violin
Tim Hugh, Cello