Having begun his latter-day association with the NDR Sinfonieorchester in 2003 with the symphonies of Brahms, Christoph von Dohnányi returned to them in a cycle of performances spread over the course of three months. ‘I am keen to continuously keep working on some pieces with which one is never finished in one’s life,’ he observed in an interview at the time. ‘For example, the question returns to me time and again: How to do these four Brahms symphonies?’