This third volume of our Michael Gielen Edition is devoted to music by Johannes Brahms, with all the recordings taken from the archives of the Southwest German Radio (SWR). The recordings were made between April 1989 and January 2005 in the Hans-Rosbaud Studio Baden-Baden. The programme comprises Brahms’s four symphonies, the First Piano Concerto, the Double Concerto for violin and cello, the Haydn Variations and the Tragic Overture.

Michael Gielen enjoyed a felicitous involvement with Brahms’s chamber music, particularly the late piano works where, in Schoenberg's words, the 'progressive Brahms' is most evident. Maybe that’s why Brahms’s First Piano Quartet, orchestrated by Arnold Schoenberg, sounds so ravishingly sharp under Gielen’s direction.

The three distinguished soloists in the two concertos are Gerhard Oppitz, Mark Kaplan and David Geringas.

The solemnity of the Schicksalslied calls for sincere commitment on the part of the conductor. Working as one, the Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg and Michael Gielen achieve an interpretation of this work that is both balanced and comforting.