The musical text of the Johannes Brahms – Collected Works edition remains a milestone of musical scholarship to this day. In fact, it is even more valuable since Breitkopf & Härtel has published the major orchestral, piano and choral works in single editions and with extensive prefaces by Ulrich Mahlert. The symphonies, edited at the time by Hans Gál after the composer’s copies, form a central group of Brahms’s works.