The Philharmonia Orchestra and Christoph von Dohnányi continued to prepare for a three-night residency at Vienna’s Musikverein with this pairing of Schumann and Brahms. In a hugely influential article in 1853, Schumann had declared the younger man, then just 20 years old, to be the long-awaited successor to Beethoven: ‘a musician who would reveal his mastery not in gradual stages but like Minerva would spring fully armed from Kronos’s head. And he has come; a young man over whose cradle Graces and Heroes have stood watch.’