Brahms’s Fourth

When Brahms’s Fourth Symphony was first performed in 1885, one critic said that it was like gazing into a deep well – the darker the sky, the more brightly the stars shine back. 140 years on, it’s just as beautiful, and for our Principal Conductor Edward Gardner, it’s a source of enduring poetry and strength. Tonight he pairs it with another tragic masterpiece by Brahms and welcomes the ‘outstanding’ (The Daily Telegraph) Pavel Kolesnikov in Tchaikovsky’s mighty First Piano Concerto. It’s hugely famous and rightly loved – but believe us, you won’t have heard it played like this.