Symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98

Brahms’s Fourth Symphony stands as a culminating statement of his creative world. The critic Eduard Hanslick compared it to a dark well: the longer one looks into it, the more brightly the stars appear. The image suits a score whose depth does not reveal itself at once. Its emotional force is inseparable from its concentration; the work gathers Brahms’s symphonic thought into a final, uncompromising form.