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 Return to Piano Project 2009 Home Page >> Introduction and Life and Career: 1833-1857 Life and Career: 1858-1876 Life and Career: 1877-1897 Brahms as Piano Composer Developments in the Piano during Brahms’s Lifetime
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Piano Project
2009: Brahms and the Piano —Roberto Hidalgo Introduction In early September of 1895, The Meiningen Music Festival devoted its entire program exclusively to the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, possibly becoming the first deliberate attempt of grouping these three composers: The Three B’s. The fact that this concept still refers to these same composers in our time is proof that there must be more than just a common initial connecting them. Already then, the association surely obeyed a perception that the old Brahms, with a bit less than two years to live, had gained a special place in the pantheon of German composers, a fact that no doubt elicited great satisfaction in him after devoting his life not only to artistic creation, but one heavily influenced by his two predecessors. This gesture by the organizers of the festival could not have paid a higher tribute to the old composer. Life and Career: 1833–1857 Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833. His father, a bass player, taught him the rudiments of music. At the age of nine, he was proficient enough to attract an American impresario who tried to engage him for a tour in the USA as a child prodigy. Happily, Brahms’s parents rejected the offer and instead procured for their son a solid education from Otto F. W. Cossel in piano and Eduard Marxsen in theory. His first solo recital happened in September 1848. That same year, a wave of Hungarian exiles passed through Hamburg on their way to the USA after the Austrian and Russian suppression of the Budapest riots. Some stayed in Germany, among whom was the great violinist Reményi. In 1853, attracted by his manner of playing, Brahms convinced the violinist to allow him as an accompanist and they toured North Germany together. It was from Reményi that Brahms learned to play “alla zingarese” as well as the use of rubato in ensemble playing. Touring with Reményi in Göttingen, Brahms met the great violinist Joseph Joachim and a close friendship for life immediately evolved. In Weimar, he met Liszt but found his music and the so-called “New German School” of composition diametrically opposed to his own aesthetics. Joachim, recognizing the talent of the young composer, urged Brahms to visit the Schumanns in Düsseldorf. Equipped with his piano sonatas and songs, among other works, he met Robert and Clara Schumann on October 31, 1853. This was a momentous encounter in his professional and personal life. Schumann immediately recognized the extraordinary potential of the young Brahms, writing an article Neue Bahnen (“New Paths”) in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik: “As I followed the career of young talents with great interest, I thought that... there must and would suddenly appear one whose destiny should be to express the spirit of our age in the highest and most ideal fashion, one who should not reveal his mastery by a gradual development, but, spring, like Minerva, fully armed from the head of Jove. And now he has come, a young creature over whose cradle the Graces and heroes have kept watch. His name is Johannes Brahms...” Brahms was only 20 years old, yet the old master unabashedly celebrated his genius: “Sitting down at the piano, he began to open up regions of wonder. We were drawn more and more into charmed circles. Add to this a technique of absolute genius, which turned the piano into an orchestra of wailing or exultant voices.” Brahms returned to Hamburg, where he accepted a position as Director of Court Concerts and Choral Society for the Prince of Lippe-Detmold, but upon hearing of Robert Schumann’s mental breakdown in February of the next year, he returned to Düsseldorf to help the family. During this period, his devotion to Clara Schumann, who was 14 years his senior, grew into a romantic passion, a feeling he tried as best he could to curb. After Robert’s death in 1856, he went through a period of desperate love for her and may have declared himself to Clara the following year. When Clara left for Berlin to live with her mother, Brahms returned to Hamburg where he was to live for the next few years. His appointment in Detmold continued and took him a few months a year. There he found the opportunity to conduct the court orchestra and learned the rudiments of orchestral technique. His two orchestral serenades opp. 11 and 16 are the byproduct of this experience. |
 An 1853 portrait of Brahms at age 20  The Brahms house in Hamburg  The front banner of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, which is still published to this day |
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