The Four Symphonies

Johannes Brahms

NDR Symphony (Gunther Wand, cond.)

album cover

Craft, on an Orchestral Scale

The symphonies of Johannes Brahms are built on granite foundations—solid musical ideas that can initially seem less than sexy. Where Beethoven seeks to push limits of harmony, phrase length, and rhythm, Brahms (1833–1897) establishes a comfortable basic perimeter, and never lets the heavy machinery venture outside of it. His four pieces for orchestra represent a scholarly consolidation of everything he knew; he didn't begin writing symphonies until after he turned forty, telling students he believed it was not a form to be tackled by the young. So, not surprisingly, there's little youthful impulsiveness in them: Sometimes Brahms's themes seem to lumber along. Just when you're about to give up, he tosses out a soaring melody, a blossom of pure grace that not merely redeems, but greatly expands, what came before it.

Each of the symphonies—which are often packaged together because they share strategies and temperaments—shows off a different facet of Brahms's melodic genius. The tight cell that defines Symphony No. 2, for example, is just three ordinary notes. From this simple beginning, the composer leads his listeners through a watch-what-I-can-do romp—he inverts the line, turns it sideways, and then, when he gets to the triumphant final movement, augments the core phrase with a few additional notes. These spark a new game of variations.

Brahms lived much of his adult life in sexual frustration. While boarding at the home of Robert and Clara Schumann, he fell in love with Clara. Their relationship never went anywhere, not even after Robert died, and Brahms pined away, lamenting the lost love of his life. As a result, he put his anguish on display in his compositions—it's audible in the slow opening to Symphony No. 1, and the second and fourth movements of Symphony No. 4. As played by the NDR Symphony, with Gunther Wand at the helm, the finale of the Fourth Symphony is like a dying man's flashback dream, with scenes of tragedy and joy bursting forth and then receding over a recurring pattern of eight chords. Brahms treats each event as a discrete scene, supporting them with slight changes of color, piling world upon world in a way that makes the mood swings consistently surprising.

Genre: Classical
Released: 1983, RCA
Key Tracks: Symphony No. 2: first movement. Symphony No. 4.
Another Interpretation: Vienna Philharmonic (Leonard Bernstein, cond.)
Catalog Choice: Double Concerto, Isaac Stern, Yo-Yo Ma, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (Claudio Abbado, cond.)
Next Stop: Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphonies Nos. 3 & 8, Cleveland Orchestra (George Szell, cond.)
After That: Franz Schubert: Eight Symphonies, Berlin Philharmonic (Karl Böhm, cond.)
Book Page: 112