Editor’s Choice, Orchestral  – June 2015

And the question remains – why aren’t Johannes Brahms’ Serenades staples of the concert repertoire? Would conductors rather cut to the chase and perform his four symphonies? Or is the truth more that, conceived when Brahms was grappling with the structural minefield of his First Symphony, those two works remain peculiarly difficult to classify? Ought conductors plot a quasi-symphonic pathway through their structures? Or in reality is each movement a self-contained character piece that would likely buckle under the pressure of a consciously symphonic treatment?

As Riccardo Chailly points out, Serenade No 1 clocks in at 40 minutes, longer than the symphonies, and no one should be lulled into any sense of false security. The Serenades might exhibit a lightness of surface, but underneath that whimsical charm Brahms’ orchestration, his rhythmic litheness and complex web of internal tempo relationships are difficult to achieve – darn difficult in fact.

Chailly’s mettle as a Brahms interpreter crystallised around his 2013 cycle of the symphonies: tempos rethought, textures thinned, traces of Germanic stodge erased. An approach that sets him up well for the Serenades;...