Брамстың соңғы симфониясы: E minor операсы, Op. 98

Symphony by Johannes Brahms

The Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98 by Johannes Brahms is the last of his symphonies. Brahms began working on the piece in Mürzzuschlag, then in the Austro Hungarian Empire, in 1884, just a year after completing his Symphony No. 3. Brahms conducted the Court Orchestra in Meiningen, Germany, for the work's premiere on 25 October 1885.

The symphony is scored for two flutes (one doubling on piccolo in the third movement only), two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon (third and fourth movements), four horns, two trumpets, three trombones (fourth movement only), timpani (two in first and second movements, three in third and fourth movements), triangle (third movement only), and strings.

There are many recordings with Wilhelm Furtwängler (several times), Eugen Jochum, Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Hermann Abendroth, Yevgeny Mravinsky, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Leopold Stokowski, Richard Tognetti, Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, John Barbirolli, Daniel Barenboim, Sergiu Celibidache, William Steinberg, Willem Mengelberg, Hans Knappertsbusch, Igor Markevitch, Serge Koussevitzky, Leonard Bernstein, John Eliot Gardiner, Carlo Maria Giulini, Carlos Kleiber, and others, with the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic, Australian Chamber Orchestra, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leningrad Philharmonic, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Boston Symphony, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, Pittsburgh Symphony, Staatskapelle Berlin, and others. Progressive rock group Yes's keyboardist Rick Wakeman abridged and arranged the third movement for various keyboards as the instrumental "Cans and Brahms" from the 1971 album Fragile.

The work was given its premiere in Meiningen on 25 October 1885, with Brahms himself conducting. The piece had earlier been given to a small private audience in a version for two pianos, played by Brahms and Ignaz Brüll. Brahms' friend and biographer Max Kalbeck, reported that the critic Eduard Hanslick, acting as one of the page turners, exclaimed on hearing the first movement at this performance: "For this whole movement I had the feeling that I was being given a beating by two incredibly intelligent people." Hanslick, however, wrote also that "[for] the musician, there is not another modern piece so productive as a subject for study. It is like a dark well; the longer we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back." The musicologist Donald Tovey praises the work as “one of the greatest orchestral works since Beethoven”, and singles out the end of the first movement, which “bears comparison with the greatest climaxes in classical music, not excluding Beethoven”. The symphony is rich in allusions, most notably to various Beethoven compositions. The symphony may well have been inspired by the tragedies of Sophocles, which Brahms had been researching at the time.