The Aivalis family could not be absent from the recent exhibition of the Association of Small Greek Wineries (SMOE) at Technopolis of the City of Athens, and on Sunday, February 2, 2025, the Music for a wine team was there to raise a glass to Christos and Sotiris. With the first sip of Armakas, a musical wave rushed into my mind, and it will surprise no one that this was Johannes Brahms’ 4th Symphony (in E minor, Op. 98). A complex and intricate work, in which the composer poured all his art, passion, and inspiration to create something unique.

Because the wave-like broken theme of the first movement sweeps us into a work that recapitulates the entire musical history up to that point, while simultaneously opening new paths with its inventiveness. In this, Brahms follows, with modifications, the classical sonata form, which he masters with his romantic passion, but also modifies. The theme appears without introduction and without repetition, combining the technique of development with that of variations, in what Arnold Schoenberg later called “developing variation.” The elegiac second movement and the explosive scherzo with its characteristic triangle overflow with inspiration. In the fourth movement, Brahms borrows the Baroque form of the passacaglia from Bach, with a repeating eight-note motif, which he develops through 30 ingenious variations.

Regarding the symphony’s apparent thematic poverty, his contemporary (and also important composer) Hugo Wolf had said that Brahms is “a master of making something out of nothing.” In his own analysis of the symphony’s first movement, Leonard Bernstein had pointed out that therein lies its value: unlike the melody of a song, a symphony’s theme must be incomplete, so that the composer can then reveal its full potential through the process known in music as development.

If in wine we appreciate complexity, understanding it as a multi-layered drink with successively revealed stages of interest and enjoyment, then Johannes Brahms’ 4th Symphony is an authentically romantic work that constantly surprises the listener with its wealth of ideas and the composer’s ability to draw from the past, without ever falling into sterile academicism. There is an unquenchable passion that drives his inspiration: for Brahms, the technique of composition becomes a means of expressing the deepest emotions.

There are countless great recordings of Brahms’ 4th Symphony. For its astonishing plasticity, we recommend this live recording by Igor Markevitch with the USSR State Symphony Orchestra (Moscow 1960):