In 2022 and 2023 Sir John Eliot Gardiner recorded the four Brahms symphonies in Amsterdam with one of the most prestigious orchestras in the world: the Royal Concertgebouw orchestra.

Gardiner writes: “The Brahms project with the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique in 2007 was a thrilling undertaking — a thorough reappraisal of Brahms’s sound world, both in terms of period instruments and a study of the surviving evidence of performance practice. So why then a second recording 18 years later? First, because these symphonies are evergreen – miracles at the time of their inception and super-challenging every time one encounters them. Second, because I sensed a need and a personal challenge to build on that seminal earlier experience and to extend its findings and interpretations to/in working with a modern instrument orchestra – especially such a distinguished, flexible and immensely accomplished one as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra – in search of a fresh synthesis of styles and approaches. ‘Fuego y cristal’, as Jorge Luis Borges described them. That’s what we’ve been aiming at.”