Brahms: Four-hand Piano Music, Vol. 9

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Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): Four Hand Piano Music Vol. 9Piano Concerto No. 1 Academic Festival OvertureJohannes 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 boy wasable to use his talents by teaching and by playing the piano in summer inns,rather than in the dockside taverns of popular legend, a romantic idea which hehimself seems later to have encouraged.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,their journey taking them, on the recommendation of the Hungarian violinistJoachim, to Weimar, where Franz Liszt held court and might have been expectedto show particular favour to a fellow-countryman. Remenyi profited from thevisit, but Brahms, with a lack of tact that was later accentuated, failed toimpress the Master. Later in the year, however, he met the Schumanns, throughJoachim's agency. 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 inD??sseldorf, the first official appointment of his career and the last. Now inthe music of Brahms he detected a promise of greatness and published his viewsin the journal 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 friend untilher 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 ofHamburg. This ambition was never fulfilled. Instead he settled in Vienna,intermittently from 1863 and definitively in 1869, establishing himself thereand seeming to many to fulfil 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 byextra-musical associations, of pure music, as opposed to the Music of theFuture promoted by Wagner and Liszt, a path to which Joachim and Brahms bothlater publicly expressed their opposition.The monumental nature of much of the orchestral work ofBrahms is in part a sign of the great pains that went