With a cherry on top
BBC Music Magazine|Christmas 2023
Despite its ostensibly festive sounds, Brahms's Fourth Symphony presents a vortex of despair, writes Tom Service. Perfect, then, for the Christmas season!
Tom Service
With a cherry on top

It's Christmas. And Johannes Brahms has the best beard in the business, so what gifts does he bear this festive season? Cherries! But cherries that don't ripen - in fact, cherries whose musical putrefaction heralds the end of an era of hope. Merry humbugging Brahmsmas with his Fourth Symphony!

The irony is that the Fourth Symphony - composed in 1884-5 in Mürzzuschlag, where Brahms said the cherries never ripen, and he worried his symphony might not either - is also a piece that makes the most superficially festive sounds that Brahms ever created in a symphony. The scherzo even includes a tinkling, twangling triangle, so surely it's a cavalcade of joy?

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Christmas 2023 من BBC Music Magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Christmas 2023 من BBC Music Magazine.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE مشاهدة الكل
Look back in anguish
BBC Music Magazine

Look back in anguish

Despite Korngold's denials, there is much to suggest that his Symphony in F sharp is a grim depiction of the dark days of Nazism, argues Jessica Duchen

time-read
7 mins  |
March 2025
Come again?
BBC Music Magazine

Come again?

If something is worth hearing once it's worth hearing again, explains Rebecca Franks, who charts a history of the use of echoes in music

time-read
6 mins  |
March 2025
THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW
BBC Music Magazine

THE BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE INTERVIEW

Music by women and composers of colour is not a separate set of pieces from the ones we know

time-read
6 mins  |
March 2025
A brilliant melting pot of discoverable works
BBC Music Magazine

A brilliant melting pot of discoverable works

Erik Levi enjoys Patricia Kopatchinskaja and friends' eloquent performances of lesser-known works by exiled composers

time-read
2 mins  |
March 2025
Pierre Boulez
BBC Music Magazine

Pierre Boulez

Tom Stewart celebrates a composer, conductor and musical iconoclast for whom breaking from tradition was not an option but a must

time-read
6 mins  |
March 2025
Vienna's cacophonous concert ends to the sound of slapping
BBC Music Magazine

Vienna's cacophonous concert ends to the sound of slapping

‘Fighting at a Schoenberg concert.

time-read
3 mins  |
March 2025
Molto humoroso
BBC Music Magazine

Molto humoroso

Cartoonist and broadcaster Gerard Hoffnung lampooned the world of classical music with splendid affection and wit, writes Andrew Green

time-read
7 mins  |
March 2025
There and back again
BBC Music Magazine

There and back again

With retrospectives on album and in concert this month, Oscar-winning composer Howard Shore reflects on his years in Middle-earth and tells Michael Beek why he has a lot to thank the LPO for...

time-read
7 mins  |
March 2025
THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Pick a theme... and name your seven favourite examples
BBC Music Magazine

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN Pick a theme... and name your seven favourite examples

Composer-conductor Odaline de la Martinez prizes tempo, swing and bounce in her top rhythmic works

time-read
3 mins  |
March 2025
Crystal clear with plenty of punch
BBC Music Magazine

Crystal clear with plenty of punch

The great is, they say, the enemy of the good, and that is certainly the case with David Sanger’s interpretation of Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 1, which stands head and shoulders above a strong field of alternative versions.

time-read
3 mins  |
March 2025