Since the completion of the last of them in the summer of 1885, all four Brahms symphonies have enjoyed a more or less regular stay in the core repertory. Though they represent a small output relative to the vast output of chamber music, as well as to the symphonies of his contemporaries and successors, Brahms's symphonies have established a major position in the concert hall; a challenge to orchestras both in balance and in the quality of playing in all departments, they still represent a means by which the highest orchestral standard is judged. Yet for the listener they have an added dimension. Perhaps more than any of the symphonic works with which they might be compared in the later nineteenth century, they embody a complex set of musical statements, gestures or ‘utterances’ that open up different structural interpretations and relations of ideas. For some listeners, the framework for the apprehension of these features is the classical exterior and the secure grounding in an Austro-Germanic musical tradition, giving these works their unique emotional, spiritual and intellectual appeal; others will cite the creativity with which Brahms met the very challenge of symphonic composition after Beethoven, a challenge inseparable from that of symphonic composition in the time of Liszt and Wagner. The aesthetic contradictions and paradoxes inherent in his solutions are an essential part of the works' appeal.

Brahms's biographers have often remarked that these large-scale works were composed within a single decade, 1875–85. To some extent, then, they spring from a single creative impulse. Although traces of it extend as far back as 1862, the First Symphony was not completed until September 1876, the bulk of the composing having taken place in 1875–6. Within the space of a single year, however, the Second Symphony followed. Then there was a lull, as Brahms turned to other projects, among them the Violin Concerto and the Second Piano Concerto, completed in 1878 and 1881 respectively. The Third Symphony was finished during the summer of 1883.