The World of Beloved Symphony
Fine Music Magazine
The Symphony no 1 of Johannes Brahms is one of the most performed and admired works of orchestral music. My first encounter with it came as a beginner saxophonist, when learning to play the theme from the fourth movement – one of the most difficult exercises in A Tune a Day, an outdated but once ubiquitous book in music teaching studios. Like a lot of Brahms’ music, this theme is deceptive in its difficulty – played by an expert, it sounds simple but to attempt it is to test yourself against the complexity of a masterpiece.
