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Overlooking a lake in the Austrian resort of Pörtschach, Johannes Brahms created a symphony that captured all he saw: the beauty of the sunset; the stillness of the night; the peaceful awakening to a new day. And yet its musicians were to play, said Brahms, as if ‘with a mourning ribbon around their arm’.

Brahms’s meeting of glowing melancholy and piercing brightness is the culmination of the Berlin Philharmonic’s second Prom under Sir Simon Rattle, following Dvořák’s colourful Slavonic Dances and a new work from Julian Anderson.