Album: Brahms, Symophony No 4 – Gardiner (Soli deo Gloria)

Recorded live at the Royal Festival Hall, John Eliot Gardiner's interpretation of Brahms' Fourth Symphony seemed deeply perverse at the time.

Four or five hearings later and his abrupt changes of tempi begin to make sense, while the variety of tone, dynamic and texture from Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique is consistently well defined.

A no-prisoners account of Beethoven's Coriolan Overture opens a programme that explores Brahms' choral influences, with pristine excerpts of Gabrieli, Schütz and Bach.