Dohnányi conducts Brahms | Philharmonia Orchestra

Brahms certainly had a sense of humour: he wrote to his publisher that his Second Symphony was melancholy in tone and that the score must sound like mourning. In fact his Symphony No. 2 is cheerful, lighthearted and picturesquely pastoral in style, with one of Brahms's friends commenting "Why, it is all blue sky, babbling streams, sunshine, and cool green shade!"

Beethoven's Fouth Piano Concerto is similarly sparkling and lively in its outer movements, though its sombre and etiolated slow movement - widely associated with the image of Orpheus taming the Furies - provides a moment of contrast.