Johannes Brahms
Today we’re listening to Johannes Brahms, a German composer from Hamburg. He was born in 1833 to a musical family and began piano lessons at a young age.1 He gave his first public performance (of Beethoven) at age ten and annoyed his early teachers with his prolific composition. While embracing Romanticism, he eschewed the trendy narrativity of contemporaries Liszt and Wagner, giving him a reputation as a “serious” or conservative composer.2 Deutsche Grammophon summed up his style thus: “Brahms blended Beethovenian dynamism, Schubertian lyricism, a love of German folk song and the strict contrapuntal mastery of the Baroque into a synthesis of phenomenal richness.” First we’re playing a collection of his late piano works, performed by the Polish pianist Piotr Anderszewski, which came out in January. Second we’re playing his Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, performed by Itzhak Perlman and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1976. Give it up for Brahms.
Brahms: Late Piano Works - Johannes Brahms & Piotr Anderszewski (49m, no vocals)
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Brahms: Violin Concerto, Op. 77 - Johannes Brahms, Itzhak Perlman, & Chicago Symphony Orchestra (43m, no vocals)
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Congratulations, Flow State drew me to take a second listen to a composer I had dismissed as 'dull' and unappealing. I liked the Andreszewski recording and very intrigued to hear what Brahms did with strings, since I think of him as very 'pianistic' (if such an adjective exists). Brahms is not boring after all, at least not as much as I thought before.