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Lisl’s husband Heinrich had not written him, but her response included his. Brahms could not miss that when her attempts to put a good face on it were discounted, these comments amounted to a prophecy of doom. The new symphony threatened to be too cerebral even for the Herzogenbergs. The critics who accused him of placing intellect above feeling were going to have a field day.

As usual Brahms kept his feelings close—in fact, became cagier than usual. At a café early that October Max Kalbeck inquired after the summer’s work. A new string quartet, perhaps?

“God forbid, nothing so grand as that!” Brahms exclaimed. “Once again I’ve just thrown together a bunch of polkas and waltzes. If you really want, I’ll play it over for you.” Kalbeck jumped up to open the piano. “No, wait,” Brahms continued. “The matter isn’t so easy. ’Nazy has to help.” Then Kalbeck understood: if Brahms needed Ignaz Brüll’s two hands to help play it, this must be something big, a symphony.

So Kalbeck found himself, as on earlier occasions, in the Ehrbar piano salon with Brahms and Brüll at the piano, other invited listeners including Hanslick, Billroth, and conductor Hans Richter. Two years before, when nearly the same friends had heard the Third Symphony played in the same place, there had been bravos and Richter had made a toast: “Long live Maestro Brahms’s Eroica!” This time, after composer and assistant had plowed through the first movement of the Fourth, the response, except for Richter muttering into his beard and Brüll nervously clearing his throat, was a resounding silence.

“Well, let’s go on,” Brahms growled. Hanslick gave a deep sigh and said, “I feel like I’ve just been beaten up by two terribly intelligent people.” That brought a laugh, at least. The four hands continued. After the andante Kalbeck expressed, as he recalled it, “some resounding banality which probably had a still more disagreeable effect than the uneasy silence that preceded it.” There followed the pounding two-beat scherzo and the somber chaconne of the finale. More silence. The friends scattered from the reading in a dismal mood.

Kalbeck spent a troubled night, finally deciding to confront the bear in his den next day. “So fire away!” said Brahms when Kalbeck appeared. “Of course I noticed that you didn’t like the symphony yesterday, and honestly, that hurt. If my music doesn’t please people like Billroth, Hanslick, or you, then who is it supposed to please?”

Heart pounding, Kalbeck spoke his piece. You must hold the symphony back, he said. Throw away the scherzo with its “abrupt principal and trite subsidiary themes.” Make the finale a freestanding work, then compose two new movements. Brahms heard Kalbeck out and responded gravely. He would not try to defend the third movement because you can’t argue about the value of melodies; anyway it was conceived for orchestra and so made little effect on piano. The last movement, its thirty variations above a bass line, he justified with reference to a similar structure in Beethoven’s Eroica. After some two hours of debate back and forth, Brahms announced he would not hold back the symphony. “I don’t give a damn about the shouters in the pit—and the rest of the public, between you and me, ditto. You may be right. But first we have to hear how it works with orchestra.”2 He dispatched Kalbeck with thanks.

The symphony seemed to be taking every possible ounce of flesh out of him. A few days later his fears were clanging as he wrote Elisabet von Herzogenberg, “It’s very doubtful whether I shall inflict the piece on anybody else [after the premiere in Meiningen].”3 Later, with a surge of hope, he sent Lisl the two-piano reduction of the whole piece, saying, “You will also have a chance of modifying your criticism very considerably!” There followed a long silence from the Herzogenbergs. Finally Brahms wrote Heinz with wrathful sarcasm: “Many thanks for your kind [nonexistent] letter. My letter-writing pen cannot contain itself for joy at the beautiful example set