Having successfully completed his First Symphony after a fifteen-year struggle, Brahms began composing his Second almost immediately. His friend, the scholar Philipp Spitta, noted that ‘the first two symphonies form a contrasted imaginative pair entirely characteristic of the composer, and they must be regarded as stemming from a single deeply-hidden root’.

This is the second release in Naxos’s major new cycle of the Brahms Symphonies featuring the internationally acclaimed London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Marin Alsop. ‘Marin Alsop brings the right balance of freshness and tradition to Brahms’ First Symphony. Alsop admirably captures the symphony’s mixture of dynamism and lyricism.’ (The Daily Telegraph on Naxos 8.557428).