Full Score edited by Robert Pascall and Michael Struck

Brahms's Second Symphony is not a work whose definitive version was already laid down with its first transcription, even though the compositional process and the world premiere took place in the same year, 1877. As can be inferred from the autograph, before the first concerts, Brahms was still working intensively on the orchestration of the brass of the two outer movements, refining and honing it, and revising the string accompaniment in the coda of the first movement as well. Even after the acclaimed world premiere, the composer's self-doubts still had not vanished: Brahms deleted the penultimate measure in the Adagio and confounded publisher and critics alike with such comments as: "The new symphony is so melancholy that you won't be able to bear it. The score must be published with a mourning border."