Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) had lived over two-thirds of his life
when
his
Symphony No. 1 in C minor (op. 68)
was first performed in November 1876.
Although the work came late in his career, Brahms already had
considerable experience with orchestral writing and symphonic form.
The D-minor Piano Concerto (op. 15)
had started life
as a symphony while the orchestral Serenades (op. 11 and op. 16), at
least in terms of form and length, are closely related to the
symphony. Brahms had also completed Eine
deutsches Requiem, the
Schicksalslied, the Triumphlied, and Rinaldo.
In contrast to Mozart
and Bizet with their youthful
symphonic experiments, Brahms could hardly be
patronized for producing a “commendable effort for one so relatively
inexperienced.”
Instead, Brahms’s fate was
to be
cast as some sort of Greyfriars Bobby of the classical tradition,
a feckless Papa Katzenjammer who never lost his old-fashioned
accent.

As if making up for lost time, Brahms completed his Symphony No. 2
in D major (op. 73) in 1877, right on the heels of his first
symphony.
His Symphony No. 3 in F major (op. 90) appeared six years after that, and
the Symphony No. 4 in E minor (op. 98) had its first public hearing
in October 1885. It was also performed in March 1897 during the last
concert Brahms was to hear before his death three weeks later.
It was on the occasion of the centenary of his death that the New
York Philharmonic