Brahms: Symphonies (complete) / Overtures / Hungarian Dances / etc

GRAMOPHONE MAGAZINE AWARD WINNER 2014 - Orchestral
Gramophone Magazine - Disc of the month October 2013

"dynamic and dramatic readings, faithful to Brahms's intentions. Powerfully conceived, they are rhythmically alert, without an ounce of undue sentiment and never for an instant losing sight of the scores' rock-solid architecture. The Gewandhaus players reward him with magnificent playing, alert and sumptuously rich in sound." BBC Music Magazine Awards 2014 Orchestral WINNER

"Chailly achieves a refreshing clarity and vividness...Sometimes, I feel, clarity is achieved at the cost of lightening the bass too much. All in all, though, these are richly stimulating performances." (Sunday Times)

"There's not a whiff of Germanic stodginess, but nor do you feel the music is being unnaturally pushed. Chailly's tempi, faster than 20th century tradition and always consistent within themselves, bring out the "classical" in Brahms, and the Leipzigers' performances - wonderfully lithe as well as meltingly lyrical - are a tonic" (Five Stars Financial Times)

"During Riccardo Chailly's eight-year reign in Leipzig, the Gewandhaus Orchestra has become as articulate a Brahms ensemble as any in Austro-Germany. It helps, of course, that Chailly himself is a trusted Brahmsian. Chailly belongs to that select group of conductors on record who direct all four Brahms symphonies almost equally well. Such conductors - Weingartner, Klemperer, Boult, Wand and Loughran in his fine Hallé cycle - tend to belong to the spare-sounding, classically orientated school of Brahms interpretation, a school to which Chailly himself also subscribes." (Gramophone)