FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms’s relationship with Robert and Clara Schumann was a close but complicated one. In 1850, at age 16, Brahms sent a parcel of his compositions to Robert Schumann – considered at the time the torchbearers of progressive musical thinking in Germany – for his evaluation; it was returned unopened.

Undaunted, but with trepidation, the shy, 20-year-old budding composer had the courage in September 1853 to go to Düsseldorf in person and knock on the Schumanns’ door. In his hand was a sheaf of manuscripts, including the complete scores of his First and Second Piano Sonatas and the incomplete one of the Third.

Robert and Clara were tremendously impressed by the young composer, lauding him both in their diaries and letters, as well as in the musical magazine Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. With this kind of encouragement and with the help of many of the Schumanns’ friends, Brahms traveled to Leipzig, the great musical center, to offer his piano music to Breitkopf & Härtel, then the Cadillac of music publishers. Given the imprimatur of Germany’s musical elite, Härtel put the pieces into print immediately.

The tables were turned six months later. In March 1854 Robert Schumann had a nervous breakdown, attempted suicide, and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. Brahms rushed back to Düsseldorf to assist Clara with the care of her family and her husband’s business affairs. He also fell in love with Clara, but – as was probably the case with all other of Brahms’ loves – the relationship remained intense but Platonic. After Robert’s death in 1856, the two developed their separate careers but remained the closest of friends, despite occasional serious disagreements. Their correspondence was voluminous, Brahms always depending on Clara’s judgment as he completed new compositions.



Johannes Brahms
1833-1897

Johannes Brahms
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83

When Johannes Brahms premiered his Piano Concerto No.1 in the 1859, he was a young, rising composer still very unsure of himself, especially in the art of orchestration. By the time he premiered his second concerto in 1881, he was a revered master, considered, as the University of Breslau so stuffily put it (in Latin), "the foremost exponent in Germany of musical art in the more severe style" and sure of his powers. The irony of his self-depreciation in his letter to his close friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg is evident: "...I have written a tiny, tiny piano concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo." This about one of the most gigantic piano concertos ever written with an "extra" fourth movement to boot (Brahms is said to have referred to it jokingly as "The long terror.") Sketches of the concerto date back to 1878 when Brahms was at work on his Violin Concerto. A discarded scherzo movement for that concerto became the basis for the second movement Scherzo of the Second Piano Concerto, one of the few in the entire concerto repertory. Brahms premiered the Concerto in Budapest on November 9, 1881. It was to be the last of his works that he prepared to perform in public.

In contrast to the stormy First Concerto, the B-flat Concerto is comparatively optimistic in mood, except for the passionate outburst of the Scherzo, perhaps a counterweight to the dignity of the movements that flank it. In all his concerti, Brahms selected solo instruments from the orchestra who were to have a special intimate relationship with the principal soloist. The most notable are the oboe in the Violin Concerto, and the horn and the cello in the Second Piano Concerto.

The first movement vacillates between dignified serenity and high drama; The opening theme itself comprises both qualities; the first half opens with a gentle call on a solo French horn, echoed up by the piano,

but the piano continues with a series of growls and a grand arch of arpeggios over five and a half octaves and then launches into a cadenza, recalling Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto.

There are two important subsidiary themes, in addition to numerous smaller motives that make up the fabric of the huge movement

but it is the horn theme that dominates as it continually appears in a variety of guises, even suddenly emerging from one of the wealth of subsidiary themes.

Brahms called the second movement a scherzo, the Italian word for game or joke. But this game is deadly serious. In the key of d minor in contrast to the B flat major of the other three movements. It is passionate, even angry, beginning with a motive on the upbeat charging right into a syncopated theme that creates a driving momentum and becomes a motto for the movement.

A quieter second theme introduced by the violins and taken up by the piano calms the restlessness, but only temporarily.

The Scherzo cadence almost crashes into the Trio, which returns to the major mode with a fanfare-like theme, temporarily triumphing over the storm of emotions,

only to be cut short by the return of the scherzo.

The Andante third movement opens with a poignant solo cello melody which is the dream of every orchestral cello player.

It is one of those melodies that creates exquisite suspense by delaying resolution at all the expected spots. The piano never takes this theme up in its entirety, but rather embellishes it with delicate filigree.

In the middle of the movement, two clarinets, accompanied by the piano, hold a pianissimo gentle conversation.

The solo cello returns to close the movement but not before Brahms has spun out his gentle suspense through a handful of unexpected key changes and deceptive cadences.

The Allegretto grazioso finale is a high-spirited, playful rondo,

laced with occasional gypsy flavor recalling the Hungarian Dances.

The jury is out as to whether this lighthearted rondo is an adequate balance to the three weighty movements that precede it. And it certainly has its darker moments. However, it can be viewed as a relief from the intensity of the preceding three movements or, as the great British music critic Sir Donald Francis Tovey, concluded, "We have done our work - let the children play in a world that has been made safer and happier for them."



Robert Schumann
1810-1856

Robert Schumann
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 97

In September 1850 Robert Schumann moved to Düsseldorf to take up his new position as the city’s municipal music director. It was the first time he had lived near the Rhine, the cradle of German legend and poetry. In the turmoil created by the move, his creative frenzy – the manic half of his bipolar personality – proved phenomenal, and before the end of the year he had composed the Cello Concerto and the Third Symphony, written between November 2 and December 9.

The Third is by far the most programmatic of Schumann’s symphonies. Delighted by the potential his new position and by the outgoing nature of the people, he wrote the symphony in homage to his new home. He took two side-trips to Cologne and visited its famous cathedral, at that time still unfinished after 620 years of intermitted construction. He was awed by the majesty of the building - a supreme Gothic masterpiece- and, to celebrate the installation of a new cardinal, added an extra movement (the fourth) to the Symphony, originally designating it “In the character of a procession for a solemn ceremony.” He later removed the subtitle.

The Symphony is extremely accessible, with clear-cut singable melodies. Schumann, one of the most prominent and outspoken aestheticians of the Romantic era, deliberately focused on striking a balance between giving this work popular appeal without sacrificing the dictates of high art.

The Third Symphony is the only one of Schumann’s symphonies without a slow introduction. It opens with a lively, sweeping theme.

The second theme, while different in mood is also long.

The exuberant mood reflects the composer’s pleasure at his new surroundings. This theme, imitating the flow of the river may, in fact, have influenced Wagner, whose Leitmotif representing the Rhine in The Ring is in the same expansive mood and 6/8 meter.

The easy-going Scherzo opens with the cellos in the rhythm of the Ländler, the peasant forerunner of the waltz;

it was originally subtitled “Morning on the Rhine.” The Trio features the horns.

The third movement is really the "extra" one for a structure that usually at this time comprised four movements only. It is a charming intermezzo.

After the main theme, Schumann goes on to state another one, which he develops more fully and whose first notes are a recurring rhythmic pattern.

This movement represents one of the places where Schumann straddles the fence between popular and high art, using subtle shifting rhythms within accessible tunes. The following movement, however, leaves the masses behind, substituting awe with artistic popularism.

The scoring of the Symphony includes three trombones, but these are silent for the first three movements. They burst upon the scene suddenly in the fourth movement to maximum effect, introducing the majestic theme in, as Schumann called it, the so-called “cathedral” movement, referring both to the composer's visit to the Cologne Cathedral and to the solemn contrapuntal style of the sixteenth century. Schumann introduces the principal theme as a fugue for the trombones and horns, the pianissimo pizzicato basses beating time in the slow "processional."

Schumann develops the theme with all the contrapuntal flourishes, as in this example where the theme is presented in diminution (short note values) against the theme in its original form – most certainly a nod to one of his idols, J. S. Bach.

In the fifth movement, we are back outside in the sunny Rhineland. Schumann unleashes a volley of short tunes.

Before the end, he take one more crack at the theme of the fourth movement, here transformed into the major mode, speeded up – but still contrapuntal.