Brahms's Symphony No. 4

John Eliot Gardiner conducts, Stephen Hough plays Piano Concerto No. 2

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner is pairing Brahms’s masterly Fourth Symphony to the Second Piano Concerto featuring Stephen Hough. 

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image: Eduardus Lee
dates and tickets
In his intensely melancholic Fourth Symphony, Brahms’s mastery as a composer reaches unprecedented heights. 

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner is pairing Brahms’s masterly Fourth Symphony to the Second Piano Concerto featuring Stephen Hough. 

Save as favorite
In his intensely melancholic Fourth Symphony, Brahms’s mastery as a composer reaches unprecedented heights. 

Concert programme

  • Johannes Brahms

    Piano Concerto No. 2

  • -- interval --

  • Johannes Brahms

    Symphony No. 4

Performers

Dates and tickets

About this concert

John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Fourth Symphony, in which Brahms’s art as a composer reaches unprecedented heights. Filled to the brim with references to Beethoven and other composers, Brahms’s final symphony concludes with a masterful theme with variations in which he makes a deep bow before Johann Sebastian Bach. 

Brahms shares his reverence of Bach with the conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, who wrote a book about the baroque master. In addition, the British conductor runs an organic farm alongside multiple orchestras. Stephen Hough, too, has multiple talents. The world-renowned pianist is also a painter, composer, novelist and an award-winning poet. Even Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto has multiple identities. It has the length and structure of a full-scale symphony, but is equally a solid virtuoso work. The intimate third movement also has chamber music elements. There’s certainly a lot to enjoy here.