Brahms: Four-hand Piano Music, Vol. 6

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Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)Four Hand Piano Music, Volume 6 Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833, the son of adouble-bass player and his much older wife, a seamstress His childhood wasspent in relative poverty, and his early studies in music, as a pianist ratherthan as a string-player, developed his talent to such an extent that there wastalk of touring as a prodigy at the age of eleven. It was Eduard Marxsen whogave him a grounding in the technical basis of composition, while the boyhelped his family by playing the piano in dockside taverns. In 1851 Brahms met the emigre Hungarian violinist Remenyi,who introduced him to Hungarian dance music that had a later influence on hiswork. 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 previousincumbent, Ferdinand Hiller, of the position of municipal director of music in Dusseldorf,the first and last official appointment of his career. Now in the music ofBrahms he detected a promise of greatness and published his views in thejournal he had once edited, the Neue Zeitschrift fur 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 beable to return in triumph to a position of distinction in the musical life of Hamburg,but this ambition was never fulfilled. Instead he settled in Vienna, interntittentlyfrom 1863 and definitively in 1869, establishing himself there and seeming tomany tofulfil Schumann's early prophecy. In him his supporters,including, above all, the distinguished critic and writer Eduard Hanslick, sawa true successor to 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 publicly expressedtheir opposition. The first of Brahms's symphonies was slow in gestation.Overawed by the example of Beethoven and the manifold expectations of hisfriends, and unresponsive to their anxious queries, he eventually completed hisSymphony No. 1 in C minor, Opus 68 in the summer of 1876. In