Best Brahms Third Symphony

Herbert von Karajan is my favorite Brahms interpreter. He was director of both the Berlin and the Vienna. 

Two of my favorites are Janowski and Muti.

rok2id,
Thanks for the YouTube link. 

Very opinionated, but very enjoyable to listen to, and seems to know his stuff.  I have purchased several of his recommendations.  No disappointments so far.

Not only the BEST, but the WORST also.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeHrQH7l31Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXhQfIeT6R4

Cheers

My choice for best interpretation of the Brahms Third Symphony is Kempe/Berlin Philharmonic

I like the agility of a chamber orchestra.

It is unusual , IMO in a good way .That size and sometime single violin to a part is the sort of sound Brahms would have heard in his day .

Only big Orchestra that played that way was the Leipzig Gewandhaus under Masur.
Till the DDR fell all the players and Masur were alums of the Leipzig
Conservatory and were taught to play in that 1850’s style off the original
scores annotated by their former conductor , Mendelssohn.
IMO both Brahms and especially Schumann sound better this way .
I never recommend Masur and the Gewandhaus knowing it is an acquired taste , but it is one I acquired hearing them live many times .

As rcprince said, very refreshing .

@schubert +1! Charles Mackerras sounds unusual to me but there is no limit to how many readings of my fav 1st a boy can have! SQ is excellent, if that matters...

Thanks for the responses. I usually buy classical from arkivmusi. I will take a look there.

I'll second Schubert on the Mackerras/SCO recording, a different sound than you might be used to but very refreshing.

Well as a Brahms freak I think you do have two of the best .
A very nice 3rd is the Charles Mackerras on Telarc CD-80450 with the Scottish Chamber Orch, His genius and the smaller force are just plain lovely .
Another fine one is Alsop with the London Phil . on Naxos, . She is a great conductor .

My personal favorite is Brahms under Bohm, available as a 3-CD set from DG. Favorite simply because this is the reading I am listening to since my teens.
Gentle folks here pushed me towards "NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection". Now is a good time to say a Big THANK YOU for the tip!!!!!!!! Its the first "guide" in my collection which resembles my fav book on the 20th century Classical, "The Rest is Noise" by Alex Ross. In short: buy it!!!! Spoiler Alert!: NPR’s top recommendations for Brahms are Bruno Walter (have it), Claudio Abbado (got it!), Istvan Kertesz (ain’t got it! ;-( )
start with those, my fav is just my uneducated guess of someone who listens to "classical" allthetime but who dropped out of Musik Skool at the age of 10 to become an "engineer"!!