Brahms breaks the rules

Synopsis

The Piano Concerto No. 1 by Brahms received its premiere public performance on today’s date in 1859 with the Hanover Court Orchestra under the direction of Brahms’ close friend Joseph Joachim and its 25-year composer as soloist.

That first night audience had never heard anything quite like it. In his biography of Brahms, Jan Swafford describes what was expected of a piano concerto back then, namely “virtuosic brilliance, dazzling cadenzas, not too many minor keys, [and nothing] too tragic.”

“To the degree that these were the rules, [Brahms] violated every one of them,” wrote Swafford.

His concerto opens with heaven-storming drama, continues with deeply melancholic lyricism, and closes with something akin to hard-fought, even grim, triumph. Rather than a display of flashy virtuosity, Brahms’s concerto comes off as somber and deeply emotional. A second performance, five days later in Leipzig, was hissed.

“I am experimenting and feeling my way,” Brahms wrote to his friend Joachim, adding, “all the same, the hissing was rather too much."

Now regarded a dark Romantic masterpiece, it’s important to remember how long it took audiences to warm to Brahms’ music. American composer Elliott Carter recalled that even in the 1920s, Boston concert goers used to quip that the exit signs meant, “This way in case of Brahms.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Piano Concerto No. 1 - I. Maestoso - Poco più moderato; Maurizio Pollini, piano; Berlin Philharmonic; Claudio Abbado, conductor; DG 447041

On This Day

Births

• 1899 - Russian-born American composer Alexander Tcherepnin, in St. Petersburg (Julian date: Jan. 9)

Deaths

• 1851 - German opera composer Albert Lortzing, 49, in Berlin

• 1948 - Italian composer Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, 72, in Venice

Premieres

• 1713 - Handel: opera Teseo (Julian date: Jan. 10)

• 1725 - Bach: Sacred Cantata No. 111 (Was mein Gott will, das G’scheh Allzeit) performed on the third Sunday after Epiphany as part of Bach’s second annual Sacred Cantata cycle in Leipzig (1724/25)

• 1816 - Cherubini: Requiem, in Paris

• 1880 - Rimsky-Korsakov: opera May Night, in St. Petersburg, Napravnik conducting (Julian date: Jan. 9)

• 1904 - Janácek: opera Jenufa in Brno at the National Theater

• 1927 - Roussel: Suite for orchestra, in Boston

• 1929 - Schreker: opera Der Schatzgräber (The Treasure Hunter), in Frankfurt at the Opernhaus

• 1930 - Shostakovich: Symphony No. 3 (May First), in Leningrad

• 1936 - Gershwin: Catfish Row Suite (from the opera Porgy and Bess), by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Alexander Smallens conducting

• 1947 - Martinu: Toccata e due Canzona for chamber orchestra, in Basel, Switzerland

• 1968 - Bernstein: song So Pretty (a song protesting the Vietnam War) at Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) in New York City, with singer Barbra Streisand and the composer at the piano

• 1968 - Allan Pettersson: Symphony No. 6, in Stockholm

• 1988 - Christopher Rouse: Symphony No. 1, by the Baltimore Symphony, David Zinman conducting