Symphony no. 1 in C minor, op. 68

Brahms’s journey towards his First Symphony lasted twenty-one years. He began wrestling with the genre at the age of twenty-two and completed the work only when he was convinced that he had created something worthy of the symphonic tradition. That long gestation is part of the score’s character: the music carries the pressure of sustained thought, self-criticism and artistic responsibility, but also the confidence of a composer who had finally found his own symphonic voice.