Johannes Brahms_ A Biography - Jan Swafford [68]
FROM HAMBURG, after a delightful Christmas with his family and with Eduard Marxsen at the end of that phenomenal year, Brahms wrote Joachim, “As happy as if in heaven are my parents, my teacher, and I.”59 It was a happiness incomparable—the kind of happiness the world cannot sustain, that fate crushes with the promise: you have flown so high, so low you must fall. And with that, fate ensured that Brahms would never trust happiness again.
On January 3, he returned to Hanover for a long stay with Joachim. There he began the first chamber work he would allow to survive, and the first written with Schumann’s prophecy hanging over him—the B Major Piano Trio. He would not feel reassured by what the piece told him about his command of large forms in chamber music. The year of endless good news was over. As he composed now Brahms had to confront, in the spotlight, rudiments of craftsmanship that he had not yet mastered. In that confrontation some of his chief assets, beyond tenacity, were that he never let praise reassure him, never flagged in a relentless and unforgiving self-criticism. Over and over it would be said by those who knew Brahms that for all the manifest arrogance and self-absorption, he was one of the most modest of artists.
In this Hanover trip he met New German disciple Hans von Bülow, who had been visiting Joachim over Christmas, perhaps as emissary from Liszt. This splendid conductor and pianist had greeted “Neue Bahnen” with the same groans and sarcasm as had all his circle, but on meeting “heiligen Johannes” Bülow was honest enough to be intrigued. He wrote his mother, “I have got to know Robert Schumann’s young prophet Brahms fairly intimately; he has been here two days and is always with us. A very charming, candid nature, with really quite a touch of divine grace about his talent.” That March, Bülow played the first movement of the C Major Sonata in Hamburg—the first public Brahms performance by anyone other than the composer (thereby foreshadowing an association that in later days would save Bülow’s life).
Brahms, Grimm, and Joachim formed a threesome they called the Kaffernbund, the League of Silly Asses.60 Brahms, who chain-smoked cigarettes and cigars, initiated Joachim into the vice.61 The three friends’ days, convivially seasoned with wine and tobacco, were all gaiety and charm and happiness and hope. For all Joachim’s gloom and suspiciousness, he knew how to have a jolly time.
More pleasures turned up at the end of January when Robert and Clara Schumann arrived in Hanover for a concert to be conducted by Joachim. Schumann’s admiration for Brahms had not diminished, even if he had developed doubts about what he wrote in “Neue Bahnen” (he left the article out of his collected writings). Just before he came to Hanover, Schumann wrote the violinist, “Now where is Johannes?… Is he flying high—or only amongst flowers? Is he setting drums and trumpets to work yet? He must call to mind the beginnings of the Beethoven symphonies; he must try to do something of the same kind.”62
The Hanover concert, featuring Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, his Fantasy for Violin and Orchestra with Joachim soloing, and the Beethoven Emperor Concerto with Clara soloing, found a good response. King George of Hanover received the Schumanns graciously; Clara played twice at court. Each evening the Schumanns and their protégés made music together and ended the night enlivening the café of the train station with laughter and stories. But Brahms struck an odd note; Clara found him muttering and withdrawn.63 Was it that Robert was unduly excited, or not making sense? Was it something about Clara? Somehow the situation seemed more complicated.