Brahms: String Quartets Op. 51, Nos. 1 And 2

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Johannes Brahms(1833-1897) String Quartet in Cminor, Op. 51, No. 1 String Quartet in Aminor, Op. 51, No. 2Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833, the son of a double-bassplayer and his much older wife, a seamstress. His childhood was spent in relativepoverty, and his early studies in music, for which he showed a naturalaptitude, developed his talent to such an extent that there was talk of touringas a prodigy at the age of eleven. It was Eduard Marxsen who gave him agrounding in the technical basis of composition, while the boy helped hisfamily by playing the piano in dockside taverns.In 1851 Brahms met the emigre Hungarian violinist Remenyi, whointroduced him to Hungarian dance music that had a later influence on his work.Two years later he set out in his company on his first concert tour, theirjourney taking them, on the recommendation of the Hungarian violinist Joachim,to Weimar, where Franz Liszt held court and might have been expected to showparticular favour to a fellow-countryman. Remenyi profited from the visit, butBrahms, with a lack of tact that was later accentuated, failed to impress theMaster. Later in the year, however, he met the Schumanns, through Joachim'sagency. The meeting was a fruitful one.In 1850 Schumann had taken up the offer from the previous incumbent,Ferdinand Hiller, of the position of municipal director of music in D??sseldorf,the first official appointment of his career and the last. Now in the music ofBrahms he detected a promise of greatness and published his views in thejournal he had once edited, the Neue Zeitschrift f??r Musik, declaringBrahms the long-awaited successor to Beethoven. In the following year Schumann,who had long suffered from intermittent periods of intense depression,attempted suicide. His final years, until his death in 1856, were to be spentin an asylum, while Brahms rallied to the support of Schumann's wife, thegifted pianist Clara Schumann, and her young family, remaining a firm frienduntil her death in 1896, shortly before his own in the following year.Brahms had always hoped that sooner or later he would be able to returnin triumph to a position of distinction in the musical life of Hamburg. Thisambition was never fulfilled. Instead he settled in Vienna, intermittently from1863 and definitively in 1869, establishing himself there and seeming to manyto fulfil Schumann's early prophecy. In him his supporters, including, aboveall, the distinguished critic and writer Eduard Hanslick, saw a true successorto Beethoven and a champion of music untrammelled by extra-musicalassociations, of pure music, as opposed to the Music of the Future promoted byWagner and Liszt, a path to which Joachim and Brahms both later publiclyexpressed their opposition.Brahms made a significant contribution to chamber music repertoire. Hisfirst attempts were made in the early 1850s and are now lost, but in 1853 hewrote a movement for the composite violin sonata by Schumann and his pupilAlbert Dietrich intended for Jo