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Brahms: Symphony No. 2 / Serenade No. 2

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Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) Symphony No.2 in D Major, Op. 73 Serenade No.2 in A Major, Op. 16 In 1853 Robert Schumann detected in the young Brahms a man...

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Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897)

Symphony No.2 in D Major, Op. 73

Serenade No.2 in A Major, Op. 16

In 1853 Robert Schumann detected in the young Brahms a man singled out to make articulate an ideal way of the highest expression of our time. Here indeed was the long awaited successor to Beethoven, and Schumann was prepared, like some St. John the Baptist, to declare the fact. The "veiled symphonies in sound" that Schumann had heard were not transformed into real symphonies until relatively late in Brahms' life. Much, after all, had been expected of him, and this may explain in some measure his relative diffidence, his distrust of his own abilities.

Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833. His father was a musician, a double bass player, and his mother a seamstress some 17 years older than her husband.

The family was poor, and as a boy Brahms earned money by playing the piano in dockside taverns for the entertainment of sailors. Nevertheless his talent brought him support, and teaching from Eduard Marxsen, to whom he later dedicated his B flat Piano Concerto, although claiming to have learned nothing from him.

After a period earning a living in Hamburg as a teacher and as a dance saloon pianist, Brahms first emerged as a pianist and as a composer in 1853, when he went on a brief tour with the refugee Hungarian violinist Ede Remenyi, later to be appointed solo violinist to Queen Victoria. In Hanover he met the already famous young virtuoso violinist Joseph Joachim and with the latter's introduction visited Liszt in Weimar. The later visit to Schumann in D�sseldorf, again brought about through Joachim, had more far-reaching results.

Schumann was soon to suffer a mental break-down, leading to his death in 1856 in an asylum. Brahms became a firm friend of Clara Schumann and remained so until her death in 1896.

The greater part of Brahms' career was to be spent in Vienna, where he finally settled in 1863, after earlier seasonal employment at the small court of Detmold and intermittent periods spent in Hamburg. In Vienna he established a pattern of life that was to continue until his death in 1897. He appeared as a pianist, principally in his own compositions, played with more insight than accuracy, and impressed the public with a series of compositions of strength, originality and technical perfection. Here was a demonstration that, contrary to the view of Wagner or Liszt, there was still much to be said in the traditional forms of music. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was not the last word. Critics, indeed, hailed Brahms' First Symphony in 1876 as Beethoven's Tenth.

Brahms came to occupy a unique position in Vienna, his eccentricities and gruff tactlessness tolerated as Beethoven's had been, his musical achievement unquestioned, except by the fanatical supporters of Wagner.

If Brahms' First Symphony seemed to stem from Beethoven's Ninth, the Second Symphony appears to have its origin in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony. The critic Eduard Hanslick, the self-appointed champion of Brahms and firm opponent of the 'Wagner-Liszt household", found in the work "Serene cheerfulness, at once manly and gentle, animated alternately by pleased good humour and reflective seriousness". The symphony was started during Brahms' summer holiday at Portschach on the Worthersee in 1877.

Brahms' friend, the surgeon Theodor Billroth, playing through the symphony on the piano, found in it all the natural beauty of the place. The work was completed at Lichtenthai, near Baden-Baden, in the autumn, and given its first performance at the end of Decernber by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under Hans Richter.

The first movement proclaims its mood at the very opening, an air of pastoral serenity, including in its scope a contrapuntal development and a moment or two of Mendelssohn, but never in any way what Brahms had ironically offered his publisher, a work of darker hue, but gently meditative rather than tragic. It leads to a Scherzo of grace and charm, set off by two interruptions in a duple-time Presto. In the veins of the last movement Hanslick diagnosed the blood of Mozart. The music, at times robustly cheerful, is rather more than that, an example of the composer's masterly command of contrapuntal techniques.

It maintains, in spite of the occasional cloud, a mood that Hanslick summed up as redolent of "the spring blossoms of the earth".

The Second Serenade in A major, Opus 16, was written during the period that Brahms spent in Detmold, completed in 1859 and given its first public performance in Hamburg in February 1860. It is scored for wind instruments and lower strings, without violins, and was published in the same year. Brahms made a four-hand piano arrangement of the work, a task that gave him considerable delight, as he confided to Joachim, and revised the orchestral score of the Serenade in 1875. The first of the five movements entrusts its first subject to clarinets and bassoons in thirds, the former announcing the second subject, accompanied by plucked strings. A lively G major Scherzo is followed by an A minor Adagio in which Clara Schumann detected a liturgical solemnity, finding in the following Quasi Menuetto movement something of the quality of Haydn. A colourful Rondo brings the Serenade to an end.

BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels

The history of the BRT Philharmonic Orchestra, Brussels goes back to the birth of the Belgian Radio in the 1930s. After the well-known musicologist and promoter of contemporary music, Paul Collaer, had become head of the Music Depar1ment of the Belgian Radio, the orchestra, under its conductor Franz Andre, gained a world-wide reputation for its interpretations of the latest compositions of Stravinsky, Berg, Bartok, Hindemith and other 20th century composers. The orchestra gave the first. European performance of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra in Paris and the first West European performance of the Fourth Symphony by Shostakovich, and has, over the years, worked with many leading conductors, from Pierre Boulez, Paul Hindemith and Darius Milhaud to Lorin Maazel and Zubin Mehta.

In 1978 the Radio Symphony Orchestra was dissolved and both the Flemish and the French Radio divisions set up their own symphony orchestras. The Flemish network soon had a new orchestra, the BRT Philharmonic, with some 90 musicians and Fernand Terby became its principal conductor from 1978 to 1988.

Since 1988, Alexander Rahbari has been the principal conductor and musical director of the new BRT Philharmonic Orchestra.

Alexander Rahbari

Alexander Rahbari was born in Iran in 1948 and was trained as a conductor at the Vienna Music Academy as a pupil of von Einem, Swarowsky and Osterreicher. On his return to Iran he was appointed director of the Teheran Conservatory of Music and took a leading position in the cultural development of his country. In 1977 he moved to Europe, winning first prize in the Besan9on International Conductors' Competition and the Geneva silver medal. In 1979 he was invited by Herbert von Karajan to conduct the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and served as von Karajan's assistant in Salzburg. Rahbari's subsequent career has been highly successful, with concerts throughout the world and engagements in leading opera-houses. He is Principal Guest Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra and has conducted major orchestras throughout Europe, in Japan and in Canada. Alexander Rahbari is now a citizen of Austria.

Disc 1

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73

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Performed by: French National Orchestra Belgian Radio and Television Philharmonic Orchestra Concertgebouw Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra Philharmonia Cassovia Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra London Philharmonic Orchestra Berlin Symphony Orchestra Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique Dresden Staatskapelle Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra
Composed by: Neville Marriner Johannes Brahms
Conducted by: Willem Mengelberg Marin Alsop Charles Munch Paavo Berglund Hans Vonk Kurt Sanderling Fritz Busch Otakar Trihlik Vladimir Jurowski Alexander Rahbari Neeme Jarvi Carl Schuricht Roger Norrington Wilhelm Furtwangler John Eliot Gardiner Marek Janowski
Recording date: 9 March 1990

Serenade No. 2 in A major, Op. 16

(more info)

Performed by: Symphony Nova Scotia Belgian Radio and Television Philharmonic Orchestra Capella Augustina
Composed by: Johannes Brahms
Conducted by: Andreas Spering Alexander Rahbari Georg Tintner
Recording date: 21 March 1990 / 29 January 1992

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Composer(s):
Brahms, Johannes

Conductor(s):
Rahbari, Alexander

Orchestra(s):
Belgian Radio and Television Philharmonic Orchestra

Label: Naxos Classics
UPC: 730099527927
Item Number: 8550279
Release Date: Jul 27, 1990