Michael Musgrave presents a contemporary view of Brahms 150 years after his birth, seeing him not simply as the `conservative' figure so often stressed in the past, but as one who creatively reinterpreted a wider range of historical elements than any composer of his time. Brahms absorbed his studies directly into his music-making and composition and in so doing helped to evolve not merely a personal language which was regarded as progressive and sometimes difficult by a range of contemporaries a...