Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [209]
THERE WAS ALSO A PRACTICAL MATTER on which Brahms’s ability to write a symphony depended: the public and financial fate of Ein deutsches Requiem. It was not that everything hinged on the premiere at Bremen Cathedral. His pieces often insinuated their way slowly into public affection; even the D Minor Piano Concerto managed that to a degree during the 1860s. But a quick success with the Requiem would certainly help the cause, and at this stage of his career a disaster in Bremen would have done him a great deal more harm than the one in Leipzig had. Brahms was fearless in doing what he wanted on the page, but at the same time cagey and cautious in managing his career. To write a symphony he required a long stretch of undisturbed time, i.e., money, and needed the kind of reputation that would provide a symphony first-rate early performances and respectful hearings. So as the Requiem premiere approached he felt more than usually lacerating apprehensions. The hisses at the Vienna premiere of three movements of the Requiem lingered in his ears, blending with memories of the concerto’s fate in Leipzig.
On top of it all, Clara his touchstone had said she could not come, and they remained at odds over his letter about her “unsettled way of life.” In Oldenburg a week before the premiere, Brahms sighed to Albert Dietrich, “Only Madame Schumann will be wanting now, but I shall sadly miss her presence.” Taking the hint, Dietrich contacted a miserably depressed Clara, just back in Baden-Baden from her British tour. Prodded by friends and family, she gave in and agreed to make the trip to Bremen.73
The premiere of Ein deutsches Requiem in Bremen Cathedral on April 10, 1868, came a month before Brahms’s thirty-fifth birthday. That Good Friday was beautiful with its aura of holiness, the overflowing crowd prepared for something extraordinary (and inevitably, some hoping for a fiasco). Clara surprised Brahms at the dress rehearsal the night before.74 Among the assembled next day, many arriving from a distance, were Johann Jakob Brahms, come to enjoy a little reflected glory from his son. Also in the audience were composer Max Bruch, old friends the Grimms and Dietrichs, and J. M. Rieter-Biedermann, whose firm was to publish the piece.75
Spread out before the altar of the cathedral were a chorus of two hundred and a large orchestra. Karl Reinthaler had meticulously prepared his choir during three months of rehearsals. Josef Joachim led the violins and contributed solos during the performance, Amalie Joachim added Handel’s “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” and the two joined in an aria from Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion. Julius Stockhausen had come to sing the third-movement solo that Johannes surely composed for the deep bells of his baritone. Among the chorus sat four veterans of the Hamburg Frauenchor, who had come to sing one more new work of their director.
Just before the performance Brahms took Clara’s arm at the door of the cathedral and escorted her up the nave. Many of the hundreds watching knew something of what had passed between them. There was almost an air of a marriage ceremony about that moment, their walk down the aisle arm in arm that ended not with ring and vows, but with the consecration of music.
Leaving Clara in her seat, Brahms took the podium. A silence, then he lifted the baton and the quiet pulsing of the basses began, then the gentle lines of cellos and violas rising and falling (he had kept the brightness of violins out of this somber movement). For the first time, listeners heard the simple, unforgettable opening words of the choir, foreshadowing the purpose of the Requiem and its progression from darkness to light: Blessed, blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. In the echoing