“Bach is undoubtedly music’s supreme companion of extreme distress. … But, on the plane to D.C. that night, Bach would have been too raw, too dire. With Brahms, everything passes through layers of reflection. He is the great poet of the ambiguous, in-between, nameless emotions: ambient unease, pervasive wistfulness, bemused resignation, contained rage, ironic merriment, smiling through tears, the almost pleasurable fatigue of deep depression. In a repertory full of arrested adolescents, he is the most adult of composers.” – The New Yorker