Piano Concerto No.2 in B flat

Andante: Allegretto grazioso

It seems that, unlike the tortured lives of many of the great composers, Brahms led a fortunate and perhaps rather uneventful life. His early leanings towards music were given full encouragement by his bass-playing father who gave him his first lessons. While studying the piano he was secretly composing aided by Eduard Marxson. At the age of sixteen, he gave his first public concert playing a Beethoven Sonata and a Waltz Fantasy of his own. Fortune further favoured Brahms in 1853 when he was introduced to the eminent composer and violinist Joseph Joachim through whom he met Liszt and Schumann. The latter gave a real kick-start to the young man's career with a glowing article in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. "Many new and remarkable geniuses have made their appearance, I thought to follow with interest the pathways of these elect. There would, there must, after such promise, suddenly appear one who should utter the highest ideal expression of the times, who should claim the mastership of no gradual development but burst upon us fully equipped, as Minerva sprang from the head of Jupiter. And he has come, this chosen youth over whose cradle graces and heroes seem to have kept watch. His name is Johannes Brahms".

This remarkable lionisation led to the young man's appointment as Director of Court Concerts to the Prince of Lippe-Detmold, an undemanding job which allowed him ample time to study and develop his artistic nature. A series of important appointments followed until he moved to an apartment in Karlsgasse No. 4, Vienna, where he spent his time composing, enjoying the friendship of such eminent musicians as Robert and Clara Schumann and venturing on frequent holidays to Italy and the spas of Germany. It was on one of these trips to Italy, in the company of two good friends, Carl Goldmark the composer and Theodor Bilroth, eminent surgeon and fine amateur musician, that he must have been preparing the idea of his Second Piano Concerto. Brahms loved Italy, if not its music of which he said that he "could shut his ears to it, feasting his eyes upon cathedrals and palaces, upon sculptures and paintings". He wrote to his friend Clara Schumann "You can have no conception of how beautiful it is, and you have only to take a little trouble to enjoy it in comfort. Next year you must see that you are free at the end of March, when I shall be able to be with you on the whole of the journey - by that time I shall have become a thorough Italian". Returning to one of his favourite summer-palaces in the Austrian alps, on the eve of his forty-fifth birthday, he sketched out themes for his concerto. It was, however, three years before he returned to Italy and, invigorated by the Italian spring, turned back to his concerto sketches. He retired to Pressbaum near Vienna on the 22nd May and completed the work on the 7th July. The first public performance was given in Budapest in 1881. Brahms himself was the pianist with the Orchestra of the National Theatre conducted by Alexander Erkel. In spite of the enormous technical and mental resources required to perform this concerto and the anxieties of a first performance, the composer had the energy to take up the baton to conduct his Academic Festival Overture and his First Symphony. Prodigious!

Although common practice places concertos in the first half of a concert, the length and symphonic stature of Brahms' work gives more of a satisfying balance by placing it in the second. The unusual four movement structure follows the classical symphonic idea established by Haydn many years before, giving the whole more of a "piano-symphony" feel than a solo with orchestral accompaniment. The opening is Brahms at his deeply-felt best. No confident orchestral introduction to the solo part, just a beautiful horn motif responded to by rolling piano chords - there is no doubting that we are in for fifty minutes of "high-romantic" music. Throughout, the piano and the orchestra are tightly integrated taking equal part in the development of the musical ideas. Indeed, in the lovely slow movement, a solo cello takes over much of the limelight from the piano. How wonderful that, after the depth of the first three movements, Brahms treats us to a parade of non-stop melody in the fourth - one of the most lyrical movements in all music and just what is needed to send us all away in a happy frame of mind!