Jon Johanning wrote:

>No question that they are full of "good, solid, musical craftsmanship," but
>to my mind, good, solid craftsmanship is a virtue of furniture, not music.
>The Brahms symphonies strike me as a great set of pieces to sit on and eat
>dinner off of (metaphorically speaking), but on the whole (except for a few
>passages here and there) I don't sense the sheer, fiery brilliance that
>brought me back to LvB.

Try the flute solo (if the flutist is good, anyway) in the finale of the
4th symphony.  Incredibly beautiful, and sultry, and ....  well, at the
moment I just can't think of a word large enough to describe the beauty.
Perhaps it's not "fiery brilliance," but the 4th symphony is a giant, and
that flute solo is genius.

-Lindsey Orcutt
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