Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [293]
The D Minor Concerto had been emblematic of a young composer finding his way; the Second Concerto is Brahms at his most masterful. If the experience of love and yearning and tragedy nearly overwhelmed the First, the Second turns a lofty, magisterial face to the world. If the Violin Concerto was too symphonic for many soloists to stomach, the B is more so, both in its structure and in the four-movement plan. As with the First Concerto, the treatment of the piano itself approaches orchestral in its sheer mass of sound. (In later years Brahms preferred the modern, thicker tone of instruments like the Viennese Bösendorfer, the Bechstein of Berlin, the American Steinway.42)
In their material his two mature concertos are more conservative than his symphonies—the B has one of the few real scherzos of his mature orchestral works, and in both of them one finds less rhythmic quirkiness than in the symphonies and chamber music. In the orchestra the principal theme of the B Concerto and its derivatives are largely made of quarter notes in four-square rhythms, while the piano adds resplendent figuration. (If Liszt was in some degree right about the grayness of tone, surely rhythm has much to do with it.) The D minor scherzo of the second movement is marked Allegro appassionato. If it does not possess the fantasy of his youthful scherzos, it does have a massive, at times demonic intensity, inflected by subtleties of form and rhythm that only the mature master could manage. Asked about the startling change in tone from first movement to scherzo, Brahms was apt to explain—tongue in cheek, surely—that the first movement was so “harmless” that the piece needed the passionate contrast of the scherzo.43
The first two movements omit his sweetly lyrical side, but he lays that on thick in the slow movement, starting with one of his extended, yearning cello melodies. That gives way to the playful two-beat rondo of the finale. Michael Musgrave questions whether this light, “last-dance” conclusion, spacious though it is, succeeds in balancing the textural and emotional weight of the earlier movements, especially the scherzo.44 Donald Francis Tovey, happier with the effect, metaphorizes the finale: “We have done our work—let the children play in the world which our work has made safer and happier for them.”45 In any case, with the Second Concerto Brahms commemorated the still living but now neglected Hamburg master who had made his own childhood happier, writing on the score: “Dedicated to his dear friend and teacher Eduard Marxsen.”
During the concert season of 1881–2, Brahms took the new concerto around Germany, Switzerland, and Holland, plus the two overtures, the second set of Hungarian Dances, and Nänie along with other items old and new. Whether played by Bülow and Meiningen or by local orchestras, the concerto was welcomed rapturously nearly everywhere—though tepidly in Leipzig. Clara wrote in her journal: “Brahms is celebrating such triumphs everywhere as seldom fall to the lot of a composer.”46 She did not begrudge him his success after her husband’s lifetime of comparative neglect. Clara considered Johannes hers nearly as much as Robert, and her labors critical for both of them, and so she took a proprietary interest in Johannes’s music. She also knew that whatever his triumphs on the world’s stage, in many ways he lived a sad life and always would.
BACK IN VIENNA IN MARCH 1882, just before trying Bad Ischl again for the summer, Brahms pulled together the lieder of Opuses 84–6. He sent Elisabet von Herzogenberg a