Programme note
Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No 1 in C minor, Op 68 (1876)
Un poco sostenuto – Allegro
Andante sostenuto
Un poco allegretto e grazioso
Adagio – Piu andante – Allegro ma non troppo, ma con brio
"Long and not exactly amiable" was Brahms’s typically gruff description of his First Symphony, completed at the age of 43, fourteen years after he had sent a sketch of its opening bars to his friend Clara Schumann. A neurotically unwilling symphonist, he had already transformed a previous such work into his first piano concerto. Then he had produced his Alto Rhapsody, his Variations on the St Anthony Chorale, and much fine chamber music in further avoidance of the issue. Yet his would-be symphony would not go away. By the time he completed it, the teenage Mahler and Richard Strauss were heading for fame, and Beethoven (with whom he feared comparison) had been dead for half a century. Brahms was running late, but he triumphed in the end. His Symphony in C minor – Beethoven’s favourite key of conflict – rose above the gibes that musicians of the period hurled at it.
The similarities, as Brahms himself asserted, were in any case superficial. The first movement’s portentous, not exactly amiable introduction is wholly Brahmsian in texture and tension. The succeeding
Allegro, signposted by a drum thwack, is similarly sinewy and restless, its pulse increasingly like that of a grimly grinding scherzo, which is eventually stopped in its tracks. A back reference to the introduction, with a brief glimpse of the work’s C major goal, brings the movement to its close.
But C major is still a long way off. The slow movement, which Eduard Hanslick – Vienna's pro-Brahmsian, anti-Wagnerian critic – described as a "sustained, noble song," turns instead to E major and the strings sing a tender melody, extended by oboe. Towards the end, the intertwining of horn and solo violin is a radiant masterstroke by a composer sometimes dismissed as a severely functional orchestrator.
Sustaining the mood, the third movement is a clarinet intermezzo of a very Brahmsian sort. It postpones the forthcoming struggle between C minor and C major by being cast in the key of A-flat, and is characterised by the very definitely amiable melody with which it opens.
The finale, by far the biggest of the four movements, brings the music back to its C minor roots before battling its way to C major. Muttering pizzicati and fierce swirls of string tone set the stage for drama. Then, with a powerful, almost Wagnerian drum-roll, the atmosphere clears and the horns sound a bell-like theme over shimmering strings. Trombones intone a solemn chorale and the allegro section is launched with the broad melody that was to be compared (to Brahms’ discomfort) with Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. From here the music moves inexorably into sunshine.
© Conrad Wilson
