How do you write a symphony after Beethoven? This was one of the inescapable problems that most composers of the nineteenth century were forced to address … and few of them came to the same conclusions. While Bruckner rebuilt the basic structures at a much larger scale, and Mahler tested the boundaries of the form by adding anything he could think of, Schumann and Brahms sought to advance the form through a process of gradual and continual refinement; it was these latter two composers – both of whom composed four symphonies each over a combined span of half a century – who formed the focus of a fascinating double cycle performed by the Berlin Philharmonic over the course of four consecutive nights. There was a simple logic that dictated the structure of each evening: each began with a symphony by Schumann and was followed, after an…
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