Recently awarded the prestigious Brahms Prize of the Schleswig-Holstein Brahms Society, Kent Nagano and the Hamburg State Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor from 2015 until 2025, perform the last two symphonies by the Hamburg-born composer, recorded in concert. The most personal of Johannes Brahms’s four symphonies, the Third is both heroic and deeply troubled with each movement ending quietly. The theme of the slow movement has been adapted many times and was famously incorporated into the Frank Sinatra song “Take My Love.” The Fourth Symphony might be described as the most classical of Brahms’s symphonies, not least because of its chaconne finale, a variation form inherited from the Baroque era. The culmination of a genre that cost him so much effort, the Fourth is his last – he would never compose another work of this kind.