Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner Do we have any Brahms fans here?

his first symphonies which were composed at a very young age were an attempt to copy the Viennese classical style, and are also amateur studies of the contrapuntal music found in Bach and Handel, but these pieces do not reflect his mature works were purely romantic, and vastly more significant.

it was indeed developed during the Classical period, and developed through classical composers. However, romantic composers, and even contemporary composers today use this form, so I would not say it is a "classical form".

AWN - If Romantic composers sometimes used the sonata form, how can you state that everything they wrote was driven primarily by emotion? Also - which mature works by Mendelssohn, in your opinion, are purely romantic?? Earlier today I was listening to his piano trios (piano, violin and cello). They are wonderful examples of "pure" music.

Joining the discussion rather late: I've played some of his shorter pieces and the two Rhapsodies. I really enjoy playing and listening to Brahms but I really have to be "in the mood" for him. I'm especially fond of his first symphony and concerto (first, I think?, I don't remember), but I only listen to them about once a year because I find his music draining and heavy. I find his music to be complex and emotionally exhausting. Just my take...

Brahms was keenly interested in literature. He signed his early letters "Junges Kreisler" (The "young" Kreisler, as opposed to the elder - E.T.A. Hoffmann's character)

We forget that the majority of Brahms's output was vocal, and he had a great affinity for poetry and literature. I think Brahms is unfairly labeled a composer of "absolute" music. Just because he chose not to reveal the literary inspirations behind his works doesn't mean they're not there. There are at least five piano works with direct literary ties - the slow movements of the sonatas, the "Edward" Ballade of Op. 10, and the Eb Intermezzo (Op. 117#1)

That Brahms chose to cast his works in classical forms does not exclude the idea that his works were inspired by the Romantic notions of his day.

I think much of the debate over Brahms is the result of gross oversimplification by bad professors teaching bad music appreciation classes from bad textbooks. Brahms's work is often held up as a polar opposite of Liszt and the "New German School." But while there are a great many stylistic and formal differences, there are also a great many philosophical similarities. The broad philosophical and spiritual statements one finds in the symphonic poems and vocal/orchestral works of Liszt, Strauss, Bruckner and Mahler have their counterparts in the Alto Rhapsody, Nänie, the Schicksalslied, and German Requiem.

fan must have had a bad day to have unloaded his bag of gloom ... with twittish comments on Brahms works as being:

dull and impotent with faded colours ...
whose mastery is only theoretical and whose humanity was self-serving ...
and then hiding behind the waggish humour of GB Shaw who supposedly wrote that Brahms was "the worst composer of his generation" ...

but then the playwright also said:

"Nothing soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled".

Any clown who reads smugness into the works of Brahms is in fact simply reflecting a vein of inferiority in their own upmarket makeup ... and needs to grow up.

I love Brahms although am still of the opinion that Chopin and Beethoven are #1

At the risk of being picky, I think Johannes shuffled off this mortal coil a while back and so would not be in a position to know what your language is. However, you know what his is, or you could know. So maybe one could invert your remark as, for example, 'he is like a gorgeous creature whose language I have not yet learned?' Or if you are quite convinced, you could write 'whose language I will never be able to speak', or 'whose language I do not wish to speak'.

Any of the above is fine. The original could possibly suggest whichever word you'd like to choose as the opposite of humility.

rrb
You made me smile. That is a mighty awkwardly crafted paragraph.. You could have stated it simply: you think I am being arrogant or worse, ignorant, for not loving Brahms.
That will nonetheless not change the fact that many people, more and less learned than I am, do not list Brahms as their favorite composer. My opinion reflects by definition my personal relationship to his music (and only some of it as stated throughout the thread), and not an absolute assessment of its worthiness. One would think that would have been obvious to someone as enlightened as you are.

Incidentally, I was browsing through an older issue of Gramophone today and within a few pages, I read two references to Brahms, one describing his muisc as "granitic and indigestible", and the other, by none other than Martha Argerich herself, saying that she never liked Brahms and did not record him. Just another reminder that I , and a few other PWites, are not the only ones wallowing in ignorance apparently..

One record Brahms holds in my personal book: The first movement of the second piano concerto has the most wonderful transition from development section to recapitulation.

(Runners-up are the first movement of the Schubert Bb sonata and the first movement of Mahler's 2nd symphony.)

In college I had a friend who used that graceful, profound moment from the Brahms as his answering machine message. With the beep perfectly timed to the reemergence of the main theme. So you always felt a little flushed, like you had just almost witnessed a divine revelation, whenever you called to leave a message about dinner or something.

Per Kreisler - "I think much of the debate over Brahms is the result of gross oversimplification by bad professors teaching bad music appreciation classes from bad textbooks."


Kreisler - Excellent observation !!

Huh. That must've been from sometime back, since Argerich has recorded the First Piano Quartet, the Haydn Variations and the Sonata for two pianos.

Funy Sachs. you beat me to it. I was actually looking it up because I thought I remembered listening to her Haydn variations (for 2 pianos) at last year's Lugano festival, although that was live. . Do you know the dates of the recordings. I wonder if some of what she said was "mistranslated", or I misread it. i do not have the issue with me to quote her accurately.
It was an interview with Kovacevich.

actually you articulated this very well. and what you describe is part of what i love about brahms.

i'm a huge brahms fan and have been ever since i was a child. i have never developed a taste for wagner or liszt, and think of them as lacking subtlety and greatly overblown. i like mahler even less.

brahms is incredibly difficult to play well. perhaps that is why he is so controversial with musicians. he is difficult to understand, musically, incredibly complex, with rich ideas that are not immediately apparent from reading the score.

when someone performing brahms does not really understand brahms, you get bad brahms. very few musicians really seem to understand brahms, judging from most of the live performances i have heard. maybe that is why brahms gets a bad rap. you just haven't heard the right performances.

the fact that i can't play brahms well, however, has never stopped me from totally adoring his work. he was my favorite composer when i was growing up, and is still one of my favorites, alongside bach, mozart, and schubert (to give you an idea of the general tenor of my tastes).

i only got to liking chopin after i took up the piano. he is less interesting to listen to than to play. perhaps with brahms it is the reverse, unless you are a very gifted musician.

the OP asked for some of our favorite brahms works and performances.

my absolutely most favorite performance of the first symphony is an old deutsche grammophon recording with karl bohm conducting the berlin philharmonic. he takes this magisterial work at just the right pace, whereas most of the recordings i've heard are much too plodding.

the clarinet/viola sonatas are incredible. almost modern in their forms.

the piano quintet--there's a great recording with arthur rubinstein and the guaneri quartet--plenty of spontaneity and passion for you, guaranteed.

of course i love the piano works, especially the intermezzos. radu lupu is a great brahms interpreter for these.

richter playing the second piano concerto.

the second symphony is an especial favorite. i find his symphonic works filled with so much love, and i definitely hear the echoes of the alps in them. brahms was a great nature lover.

all his chamber music works, for that matter, i recommend.

you have to remember that everything he wrote was a symphony. even the solo works are very symphonic in their layerings.

of his vocal works, i especially love the "alto rhapsody" and i recommend the old ace of clubs recording with the british singer kathleen ferrier.

so, yes, you have a brahms fan here.

Let's see -- her recording of the Sonata, the Waltzes, and the Haydn Variations with Rabinovitch on Teldec dates from 1994. She recorded the Sonata again (with Zilberstein), which was released on EMI in 2003. The recording of the First Piano Quartet (DG) was released in 2004.

Oh, and apparently Argerich forgot that one of her first recordings (her "debut" recital on DG, which dates from the 60s if memory serves) includes the Op. 79 Rhapsodies.

I found the interview online and I admit I read it too fast. While the conversation started about her and Kovacevich's discographies, she did not exactly say that she did not record Brahms, (duh.. I should have known I guess and probably should not have posted about it so quickly)..Apologies!
..
Excerpts from the Gramophone interview :

The pair discuss their discographies and the fact that there are hardly any overlaps in repertoire - almost as though Kovacevich has done one part and Argerich the other. What they wonder, determines these chokes of what you play and what you don't? Character? Temperament?
5K Who knows?
MA I think it's temperament. I think l have a youthful temperament. Not in life, but when I play. I think so
JN So you choose repertoire that reflects that? I mean, Brahms isn't going to do it for you.
MA No, he doesn't.
5K Brahms is your weak spot. For me, it's Haydn.
MA I like Haydn! Very much.
SKlknow.
M A Haydn is wonderful - he's very youthful and humorous. In life I am not as humorous, for instance, as you Stephen. You have an extraordinary sense of humour. But in music I like humour. This I got from [Friedrich] Gulda. "

Now, now, btb, my good mate, a lot of water has passed under the proverbial bridge.

Recently posted here was a wonderful YouTube of Hough playing the D minor concerto, and perhaps that reignited my love.

Unlike, say, Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner or Elgar (just a few examples), there are some moments wherein Brahms doesn't 'work' for me, and that happened the other night wherein I found the Brahms 2nd symphony more than a bit exasperating. Somehow it wasn't working for me: the whole musical argument seemed contrived and lame, the orchestration faded, the self-conscious pretension of profundity.

It is possible for some of us to go through love and hate relationships with the great composers, and I think this is a natural and healthy thing. I have never presented myself on this board as some completely self-evolved master. I have my issues, I have my loves and enthusiasms, I have my blind spots. I am a mortal, and for that I apologize. (I am also young and stupid.)

That said, down through the years there has been some very potent and cogent criticism of Brahms. In some sense he remains as controversial as Liszt, but of course I've never had any issues with Liszt.

A very good friend of mine (pianist, singer, conductor- an infinitely greater musician than I, and much older) frankly HATES Brahms with the exception of the concertos and the requiem. He is not a stupid man, he is probably as fine a musician as most on this board. Life really isn't very simple... I am not about to tell him he is a fool. (I wish I had a fraction of the knowledge of the Wagner operas he has... )

Here are two more interesting quotations, in the name of "it takes all kinds." Certainly musically intelligent people hold a variety of strong opinions.


-Gustav Mahler, letter to Alma, 1904




-Schoenberg, from Style and Idea, 1950



(By the way, I'm getting these quotes from a wonderful book called The Composer as Listener, 300 pages of composers writing about other composers' works and styles. Fascinating stuff. Out of print I'm sure, but available for free here .)

Seconded.

And one of the most beautiful slow movements there is - that of the F major cello sonata.