Johannes Brahms
Symphony No. 2
The summer of 1877 was a pleasant time for Johannes Brahms. After fifteen years of work and worry, constantly fearing comparison with Beethoven (“you have no idea how it feels to hear behind you the tramp of a giant”), he had premiered his first symphony in November of the previous year to favorable reviews. This hurdle past, Brahms took the occasion that summer to vacation in the village of Pörtschach, Austria, where “so many melodies fly about,” he wrote, “one must be careful not to tread on them.”
Relaxed and inspired, Brahms knocked off his second symphony in record time — finishing most of it that summer and performing a four-hand piano version with Ignaz Brüll for a few friends when he returned to Vienna at summer’s end. He continued polishing it through November, teasing the friends who had not heard his piano version by describing it as a very somber, sad piece. To friend and fellow pianist Clara Schumann (wife of his earliest champion, Robert Schumann), he described the first movement as “quite elegiac in character.” To long-time correspondent Elisabeth von Herzogenberg he wrote that the orchestra would have to play with mourning bands on their arms. Even his publisher, Fritz Simrock, got the treatment: “The new Symphony is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it,” Brahms told him.
Of course, the new symphony was nothing of the kind. In fact, it is probably the sunniest of his symphonies, with a pastoral quality that surprised — and delighted — his friends. Critics who had expected something in the vein of his more sober first symphony in C minor (or who had heard about the “sad” piece from Brahms’s friends) were equally surprised by this D-major symphony. One Viennese critic even complained that it was too lovely: “We require from [Brahms] music that is something more than simply pretty.”
Yet the second symphony is much more than merely pretty. The composer’s deft touch at orchestrating many textures from a relatively limited orchestral force is in full evidence here: from soft and tender melodies, to sprightly dancing tunes, to his trademark sonorous strings. Equally on display is his skill at creating endless variations from just a few themes. The first movement, Allegro non troppo, opens with a three-note motif in the low strings that develops into themes both grand and tender. The Adagio non troppo that follows is more introspective, yet never brooding. Listen for the syncopated second theme played by the woodwinds over pizzicato cellos. A solo oboe introduces a folk-like tune to open the third movement, Allegretto grazioso. This melody, with its relatively stately yet dancing rhythm, is transformed into energetic variations punctuated by a few breathless pauses. The finale, Allegro con spirito, contrasts manic energy with a broad, hymn-like melody first “sung” by the full strings. Even during the movement’s slower segments, there is an inevitable sense of motion. By the final trombone chord at movement’s end, as one critic writes, “one has the sense of having been on a wild ride.”
February 20, 2004