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Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) Allegro non troppo Andante moderato Allegro giocoso Allegro energico e passionato Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833, the son of a double-bass player and his much older wife, a seamstress. His childhood was spent in relative poverty, and his early studies in music, as a pianist rather than as a string-player, developed his talent to such an extent that there was talk of touring as a prodigy at the age of 11. It was Eduard Marxsen who gave him a grounding in the technical basis of composition, while the boy was able to use his talents by teaching and by playing the piano in summer inns. In 1851 Brahms met the emigre Hungarian Violinist Ede Remenyi and two years later they set out together on a concert tour, their journey taking them, on the recommendation of the Hungarian Violinist Joachim, to Weimar, where Franz Liszt held court and might have been expected to show particular favour to a fellow-countryman. Remenyi profited from the visit, but Brahms, with a lack of tact that was later accentuated, failed to impress the Master. Later in the year, however, he met the Schumanns, through Joachim’s agency. The meeting was a fruitful one. In the music of Brahms, Schumann detected a promise of greatness and published his views in the journal he had once edited, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, declaring Brahms the long-awaited successor to Beethoven. In the following year Schumann, who had long suffered from intermittent periods of intense depression, attempted suicide. His final years, until his death in 1856, were to be spent in an asylum, while Brahms rallied to the support of Schumann’s wife, the gifted pianist Clara Schumann, and her young family, remaining a firm friend until her death in 1896, shortly before his own in the following year. Brahms had always hoped that sooner or later he would be able to return in triumph to a Position of distinction in the musical life of Hamburg. This ambition was never fulfilled. Instead he settled in Vienna, intermittently from 1863 and definitively in 1869, establishing himself there and seeming to many to fulfil Schumann’s early prophecy. In him his supporters, including, above all, the distinguished critic and writer Eduard Hanslick, saw a true successor to Beethoven and a Champion of music untrammelled by extra-musical 24 associations, of pure music, as opposed to the Music of the Future promoted by Wagner and Liszt, a path to which Joachim and Brahms both later publicly expressed their Opposition. The summer of 1884 brought the beginning of work on the fourth and last of Brahms’s symphonies, the Symphony No.4 in E Minor, Op. 98. This was completed at the same summer resort of Mürzzuschlag the following summer, to be performed under the composer’s direction at Meiningen in October. The symphony opens with quiet serenity, followed by massive grandeur, mingled with lyricism. In the second movement Richard Strauss imagined a funeral procession moving silently across moonlit heights, suggesting, perhaps, an evocative painting by Caspar David Friedrich. A cello theme assumes prominence, with a decorative first violin part, after which the march resumes. The scherzo opens forcefully. Although it lacks a formal trio section, there is a relaxation of tension at the heart of the movement, before the original material returns in full vigour. It seems that Brahms had long contemplated a final movement in chaconne or passacaglia form, derived from his study of Bach. The movement Starts with the passacaglia theme, scored for wind Instruments, now reinforced in grandeur by three trombones. In the 30 variations that follow Brahms demonstrates his mastery of the form and his debt to tradition. Programme notes by Keith Anderson 25
