This hour of Radio Romantica will be filled mostly with Johannes Brahms’ impressive 4th symphony. Brahms was a romantic, but not a zealot, we’d sooner call him a melancholic. He mastered the techniques to make the symphony orchestra shine in all its glory, but he could also charm on a smaller scale.
Wonderfully intinimate solos for woodwinds and broadly expansive melodies for a full string orchestra- we find it all in the 4th symphony. Drama; a wink. We will conclude this programme with Brahms’ three Intermezzi, op. 117: semi-improvised beauties which he, then an old man feeling his end approaching, called ‘The lullabies of my sorrows’.
Programme details
- Johannes Brahms – Symphony no.4 in e minor, op.98
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink
- Johannes Brahms – Intermezzi op.117
Lylia Zilberstein, piano
