Open Writing

Brahms (1833-97) – Violin Concerto
The precocious young Brahms taught violin, piano and composition. By his late teens, though, he had to supplement his income playing piano in theatres, dances – and even prostitute-infested taverns. In one such iniquitous dive began the story of the Violin Concerto. Eduard Reményi, an exiled Hungarian violinist, was sufficiently impressed by Brahms’s “pub piano” playing to take on the youngster as his accompanist. “Hitting the road” was a good career move: Brahms was soon impressing all the right people. Reményi introduced him to Joachim who in turn, on the strength of Brahms’s compositions, introduced him to Liszt and Schumann. By 1856, ensconced as Princesse Frederike’s piano tutor, Brahms had a cushy job – leaving lots of time for composition.

In 1860, for signing that infamous “manifesto” opposing the “new music” of Liszt et al., he was branded a reactionary. Unjustly so, as Brahms was comparably progressive. Working from established tradition, he married architecturally expanded classical forms with passionate expression, making him something of a “missing link” between early Romanticism and the Wagner school. Had this “link” been “in the chain”, it would have made 19th Century musical evolution less revolutionary and more logically inevitable.

Following the First Piano Concerto (1859), German Requiem (1868), and Symphonies 1 and 2 (1876/7), the Violin Concerto (1878) was written for, with the invaluable advice of, and (probably) inspired by Joachim, who furnished the sympathetic cadenza. Brahms, having tried “symphonising” the form with his First Piano Concerto and poised to succeed gloriously with the Second (1881), planned the Violin Concerto in four movements. In a typically self-denigrating letter to Joachim, he reported, “The two middle movements have fallen through. Naturally they were the best ones. However, I have substituted a feeble adagio.” Remember that as you listen!

Brahms conducted the première, given by Joachim on New Year’s Day 1879. Not an instant success, it evaded the musical scrapheap only through Joachim’s unstinting championship. Karl Geringer, Brahms’s biographer, finding a kindred spirit of the Second Symphony, compares the first movement with that of Beethoven’s concerto. Really, though, it encapsulates Brahms’s own ethos: music for the most expressive instrument, incredibly lyrical and passionate (Brahms as dry as dust? Poppycock!), yet in formal terms unprecedentedly strong and complex. Whether sat back basking, or leant forward studying, you should derive endless enjoyment.

1. Allegro ma non troppo. Brahms’s remark concerning Bruckner’s “symphonic boa-constrictors” was presumably humorous, seeing as it is every bit as apposite to this movement. Classical composers keep sonata-form development tidily subsequent to exposition. Brahms doesn’t. He expands the “orchestral introduction”, immediately stating and developing the fertile first subject, establishing a pervasive creative flux.

Two “markers”, descending woodwind chords and a martial figure, first heard announcing the soloist, aid structural legibility. The woodwind chords herald both exposition and recapitulation of the second subject, a pool of lyrical ripples when set against the first’s oceanic rollers. The soloist uses the martial figure to launch the “proper” development, which is blended into the recapitulation. Unmarked, this starts (I think) where the violin carries the first subject into the stratosphere. The cadenza, like a Bach partita in its violinistic polyphony, needs no marker!

2. Adagio comprises rhapsodic variations on a lullaby for solo oboe over horns and woodwind. The first variation ends in a dissonant episode tailed by a curiously angular phrase on flute. This is re-used near the end, adding spice and a feeling of “arch” structure. At the centre, an apparently new theme is heard briefly, as ardent emotions alternately ebb and flow. The original tune reappears, now a duet between the oboe and soloist. There is a particularly delightful touch as the music settles onto a “final” chord: woodwind nudge the violin to one further blissful comment before, reluctantly, letting the movement end.

3. Allegro giocoso, ma no troppo vivace. Considering the shenanigans that Brahms is about to unleash, the key word is “giocoso” (“jocular”)! Before you read on, take a deep breath. The soloist nips in first, tossing his jaunty theme to the orchestra. Countersubject and main subject reprise suggest a classical rondo, except that here a development section begins, which makes it a sonata. But wait! After some first subject “development”, isn’t that a third theme? Maybe it’s a rondo after all. No! The second subject is re-jigged, then the soloist elaborates the first: not quite rondo or sonata!

There’s more: a forceful orchestral statement of the first subject, with solo interjections, primes a cadenza. The violin starts, soon to find the orchestra sneaking in. The compliant violin joins this “coda”, only to be unexpectedly cut off. The soloist tries again, but the orchestra rudely interrupts with a marching rhythm! Ruefully, the violin adds a merry first subject variant, and off they go (again) into the coda – genuinely this time, because the second subject gets roped in. As the soloist relaxes on a first subject fragment, several loud chords emphatically conclude what’s turned out to be an archetypical “battle” between soloist and orchestra.

© Paul Serotsky