Piano Concerto 1 - Brahms (1833-1897)

The first performance of Brahms' First Piano Concerto took place in Hanover in 1859 with the composer at the keyboard: five days later it was repeated in Leipzig where it was a complete failure. Brahms wrote to his friends Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim: "It did not go badly; I played considerably better than in Hanover and the orchestra was excellent. But the first rehearsal failed to produce effect on the musicians or the audience. At the second rehearsal there were no listeners and not a muscle moved on the faces of the players. At the performance the first and second movements produced no effect whatsoever and at the end there was only a little desultory applause which was immediately suppressed. There is nothing further to tell you about the event, for not a soul has mentioned the work to me". How devastating for a composer! Remarkably, Brahms seemed to bear these slights with equanimity: "The failure however has not affected me very much and my low spirits and bad temper soon vanished when I heard a C major symphony of Haydn and Beethoven's Ruins of Athens. Yet the concerto will become popular when I have improved its construction". And how right he was!

The music of the Concerto was originally planned as a symphony before it became a three-movement sonata for two pianos. Persuaded that the weight of the music was too heavy a burden for two pianos, Brahms used the first two movements for a concerto for piano whilst the third became part of his German Requiem. Three unusual elements of the music led to the Concerto's initial poor reception: all technical bravura is suppressed; there is an equal footing maintained between soloist and orchestra and the Concerto emulates a symphony in the breadth, seriousness and lack of triviality of its content. If this all sounds rather heavyweight, fear not. The music would not be true Brahms if it did not portray great beauty, emotion and uplift.

The first movement opens with an orchestral introduction of great power before the graceful entry of the piano. We are reminded of the strong opening idea before the second main theme, a typical Brahmsian richly-harmonised melody, is introduced by the piano and repeated by the strings. Thus all the elements of the music are in place for this deeply felt movement. Brahms has, at times, been criticised for his orchestration, yet the beautiful opening of the second movement confounds such criticism: the unison upper strings play a simple but rich melody, harmonised with just two bassoons and a bass line. As the music progresses, the intimate relationship between piano and orchestra is more fully revealed - Brahms at his most sublime. The third movement, a Rondo, sees the opening theme returning to anchor the music as it attempts to stray away on contrasted episodes. Brahms' skills extend from the technicalities of fugal form to broadly expansive melodic phrases to bring this monumental work to a satisfying conclusion.

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