Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [261]
Brahms meanwhile played cat-and-mouse with publisher Simrock, who failed to take the hint when Brahms wrote him of a lovely symphony left hanging in the trees and cliffs of Rügen. Receiving no response, Brahms wrote Simrock in disgust either real or mock,
Too bad that you are not a music director. Otherwise you could have a symphony. It will be performed on the 4th [of November] at Karlsruhe. I expect from you and other friendly publishers a nice present in recognition of my not bothering them with such things.57
At that point Simrock got the message and hastened to snap up the work. From the mid-1870s on, the publisher was to claim nearly all Brahms’s new pieces (Nänie the main exception), and eventually bought from Breitkopf & Härtel the early works in their catalog.58
Given the complexity of the music, the Karlsruhe premiere of the C Minor Symphony on November 4 was surprisingly well received. Already a number of other cities were eager to hear it. First came Mannheim, then Munich and Levi’s orchestra, Brahms conducting both performances. The Mannheimers were polite, but Munich not the least receptive to this symphony nor to Brahms generally. This was Wagner’s town. Levi had serious reservations of his own, writing Clara, “The last movement is probably the greatest thing he has yet created in the instrumental field; the first movement comes next. But about the two middle movements I have certain doubts.… They seem to belong in a serenade or a suite rather than in such a spacious symphony.” To the conductor’s complaints about the middle, Brahms replied laconically, “the finale must be considered.” Levi missed, or had no sympathy for, the realignment Brahms had wrought on symphonic form. Their visit during the Munich rehearsals was the last time they set eyes on each other.
Finally came the first Vienna hearing, Brahms conducting the Philharmonic. Billroth returned the score of the symphony with words encouraging and astute, though he went beyond his mandate in advising Brahms how to rehearse his own piece:
The last movement I have conquered fully. It seems to me one of the greatest and most glorious of your endings.… That the whole symphony has a somewhat similar emotional groundwork as Beethoven’s Ninth occurred to me in my study of it. And yet … your own artistic individuality stands out clearly.… I would lay the greatest weight in the rehearsals on the introduction of the first and the last movements … they are the most difficult of all the parts of your work to grasp.… I repeat my invitation of Thursday evening to eat oysters with you and Hanslick after the concert.
There were more raves from Billroth after the first rehearsal. Brahms, probably in an ecstasy of nervous anxiety, seized on the kind words like a drowning man and wrote Billroth a poignant letter:
I wish there were two words … to tell you very distinctly how thankful I am to you.… I would not like to say that a little composing is vain labor and trouble and only a continual nuisance and outrage, that nothing better will come of it. You may scarcely believe how wonderful it is and how it warms my heart to find the understanding and sympathy which you feel. In that moment, one does believe that’s the best thing about composing and all … connected with it.59
On December 17, 1876, Vienna received the symphony respectfully if a little coolly. Brahms knew that this reception—similar to that in Karlsruhe, Mannheim,