Brahms- Piano Concerto No 2

Description

Johannes Brahms (1833 - 1897) Piano Concerto No.2 in B FlatMajor Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856) Introduction and Allegro appassionato, Op. 92 Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833, the son of adouble-bass player and his much older wife, a seamstress. His childhood was spent inrelative poverty, and his early studies in music, for which he showed a natural aptitude,developed his talent to such an extent that there was talk of his touring as a prodigy atthe age of eleven. It was Eduard Marxsen who gave him a firm grounding in the technicalbasis of composition, while the boy earned a living for himself by playing the piano indockside taverns.In 1851 Brahms met the Hungarian violinist Remenyi, whointroduced him to Hungarian dance music. Two years later he set out in his company on hisfirst concert tour, their journey taking them, on the recommendation of the violinistJoachim, to Weimar, where Franz Liszt held court, a visit from which Remenyi profited,while Brahms failed to impress the Master. Later in the year Brahms met Schumann, againthrough Joachim's agency. The meeting was a fruitful one.In 1849 Robert Schumann had moved with his pianist wife Clarato D??sseldorf as director of music, the first official appointment of his career. In themusic of Brahms that he now heard he detected a promise of greatness and published hisviews in the journal he had once edited, the >NeueZeitschrift f??r Musik, declaring Brahms the long-awaited successor toBeethoven. In the following year Schumann, who had long suffered from periods of intensedepression, attempted suicide. His final years, until his death in 1856, were to be spentin an asylum, while Brahms rallied to the support of Clara Schumann and her young family,remaining a firm friend until her death, shortly before his own in 1897.Brahms had always hoped that sooner or later he would be ableto return in triumph to a position of distinction in the musical life of Hamburg. Thisambition was never fulfilled. Instead he settled in Vienna in 1863 and established himselfthere, seeming to many to fulfil, as the years went by, Schumann's prophecy, much to thechagrin of Wagner and his supporters, who saw the succession to Beethoven in a verydifferent light. Unlike the latter Brahms attempted no Gesammtkunstwerk and noamalgamation of the arts, as Liszt had attempted in his symphonic poems. To his friendsBrahms seemed the champion of pure or abstract music without any extra-musicalassociations."The long terror" was Brahms's description of hissecond piano concerto, a massively impressive work completed in 1881 and falling betweenthe second and third of the four symphonies in order of composition. Brahms had startedwork on the concerto in 1878 and finished the score in the summer of 1881, which he spenthappily at Pressbaum, near Vienna. For its first performance in November, 1881, thecomposer appeared as soloist in Pest, following this, later in the same month, withperformances nearer home with the Meiningen Court Orc