Festival Finale: Brahms Symphonies 1 & 4

His mother didn’t want to take him to a Brahms concert when he was a teenager, Andrew Manze tells “BR-Klassik” in an interview. Her reasoning was: You're too young for that! Can a lifelong fascination for a composer be awakened in a more sophisticated and lasting way than this? Indeed, the music of Johannes Brahms has remained something magical and mysterious for Andrew Manze to this day. Together with the NDR Radiophilharmonie, which he has led as Principal Conductor since 2014, he will perform all four symphonies by the North German composer in one weekend, making it possible to experience the magic of the Brahms cosmos in all its expressive power. Not least because of their expressive depth, complexity, and beauty, each of the four symphonies is not only one of the major works in the oeuvre of Johannes Brahms, but also one of the most popular masterpieces of Romantic music, indeed of symphonic music in general.