Your Top Four Brahms Symphonies

[Maciek]

What happens if there's a tie as between two or more symphonies?

The thread crashes.

[Wanderer]

Bump-a-thread Sunday!

My usual order of preference is 4 1 2 3.

[Symphonic Addict]

Rather different to mine: 4-3-2-1

[Lisztianwagner]

Mine could be: 3-4-2-1

Funny it almost sounds like a football tactical scheme.....

[Jo498]

I voted 4-1-3-2 but it feels very unfair. They are all great but all also have weaknesses for me. The second's last two movements are a bit too "neoclassical" for me and the whole piece doesn't reach as high as the others, I think.
#1 was my first favorite but I now think that the finale and the whole dramatic arch is a bit flawed (because it has to be started again at the beginning of the finale) but I still find it very powerful.
The 4th is about perfect but I don't like the 3rd movement very much (although I appreciate the brilliant idea of having a "false" bright finale before the real tragic finale).

Similarly with the 3rd, where the famous 3rd movement is my least favorite of all Brahms' symphonic movements and while the rest, especially the finale, is great, it's almost a bit too terse and condensed for my taste. With Brahms (at least after the 1st symphony) we often have the avoidance of overly passionate and heroic gestures and I think he overdoes his fondness for small scale lyrical intermezzo movements in the case of 2+3 of the 3rd symphony.

[André]

Mine could be: 3-4-2-1

Funny it almost sounds like a football tactical scheme.....

Yeahhh ! Same order for me

[Florestan]

4-3-2 overall

Individual movements:

3/3 - 2/1 - 4/4

I don't care for the 1st.

[Jo498]

4-3-2 overall

Individual movements:
3/3

Admit that this is because of Ingrid Bergman, not the music...

[Florestan]

Admit that this is because of Ingrid Bergman, not the music...

Nope. It's because of a radio series on classical music which I regularly listened to during my teens, whose sonic signature was 3/3. I discovered the link between it and Ingrid Bergman much later. 

What's wrong with the music? I consider it some of the best Brahms ever wrote.

[Archaic Torso of Apollo]

I voted 4-1-3-2 but it feels very unfair.

Yeah, basically. If we go by how often I listen to each of them, it's 2-1-4-3, probably. But that's not a value judgment. Rather, the 2nd is a big friendly piece that I can put on and relax to; the 1st is a big dramatic piece that I can let wash over me; the 4th is a rather tense and relentless piece that requires more concentration; the 3rd is an elusive, peculiar symphony that requires me to be in a special mood. But I think they're about equal in terms of quality.

[Jo498]

It's like the tired cliché of "Brahms the melancholy". It might have worked for me as a piano or chamber scale impromptu or maybe intermezzo in a chamber piece but I dislike it as a movement in a "real" symphony. To me it sounds  too light and too pretentious at the same time, if this oxymoron makes sense to anyone. And "alien" within this symphony. (I am a bit unfair because I also dislike its use in "Aimez-vous Brahms?" but I didn't much care for the piece long before I saw that movie.)
There is so much written about Brahms being hampered by Beethovenian heroic symphonies etc.
But he has no problems at all to write weighty dramatic movements like the outer movements of 1 and 3 and 4 or a huge "pastoral" movement like 2,i. But he seems to avoid the "big Adagio" and even more a real scherzo, instead consciously writes small scale moderato intermezzi for 3rd movements in 1-3, the strange march? in 4 and the slow movement of the 3rd also starts like a serenade (although it gets much bigger later on).

[Karl Henning]

I voted 4-1-3-2 but it feels very unfair. They are all great but all also have weaknesses for me. The second's last two movements are a bit too "neoclassical" for me and the whole piece doesn't reach as high as the others, I think.
#1 was my first favorite but I now think that the finale and the whole dramatic arch is a bit flawed (because it has to be started again at the beginning of the finale) but I still find it very powerful.
The 4th is about perfect but I don't like the 3rd movement very much (although I appreciate the brilliant idea of having a "false" bright finale before the real tragic finale).

Similarly with the 3rd, where the famous 3rd movement is my least favorite of all Brahms' symphonic movements and while the rest, especially the finale, is great, it's almost a bit too terse and condensed for my taste. With Brahms (at least after the 1st symphony) we often have the avoidance of overly passionate and heroic gestures and I think he overdoes his fondness for small scale lyrical intermezzo movements in the case of 2+3 of the 3rd symphony.

Agreed that the Allegro giocoso of the e minor symphony is better in theory (and is for me the weakest Brahms symphony movement) but the symphony overall is perhaps my favorite of the four, notwithstanding, or maybe the F Major symphony ....

[Cato]

My favorite Brahms symphony is the one by Hans Rott!   


I want to say Symphony #4 is the best, but I have never found the last movement satisfactory, and I suspect it is because - as Karl pointed out above - the movement seems better in theory, but (for me at least) it sets up something different from the enigmatic Finale.

So, I guess: 3-4-1-2.

But seriously: my most favorite Brahms symphony is the Second Piano Concerto!   

[Todd]

2-1-4-3 for me.

[MusicTurner]

3-1-2-4, but I much prefer the chamber music and three of the concertos, even some of the other orchestral music and the piano solo works. There's just something about these symphonies that doesn't appeal to me.

[Brian]

Since this poll was originally posted, I've gone from 4-3-2-1 to 4-2-3-1 (which, at the time, only one person chose).

[Florestan]

I much prefer the chamber music and [...] the concertos, even some of the other orchestral music and the piano solo works.

Agreed. Completely.

[DavidW]

3-2-4-1 for me.  I love them, but the third is magical for me in a way that transcends the others.  Not only do I have a unique rating, but I might also be the only one here that thinks that all four are masterpieces.  I love them all without reservation.

[Todd]

...I might also be the only one here that thinks that all four are masterpieces.

You are not the only one.

[Jo498]

I also think all 4 are masterpieces. That doesn't mean that there are not some aspects where I "stumble" or am not totally convinced. I don't really prefer Brahms's music in other genres either but I think that he was less hampered there by the weight of tradition than in the symphonies.
I might as well have voted 1-2-4-3, I think only the 3rd would never be in my top 2.