I Virtuosi Italiani: You like Brahms?

About the Event

Experience classical music like never before in this astonishing performance of masterworks by Johannes Brahms at Verona's remarkable Teatro Ristori.
What chamber music is, what its characteristics are and its function in the artistic tradition of 19th century Germany is explained by Paul Hindemith in his theoretical and critical book “A Composer's World” published in 1952 and full of ideas and reflections, not only musical. “In a very small hall,” writes the composer from Hanau, ”in a living room, we can clearly discern the most elaborate melodic lines, the most complex harmonies and the most intricate rhythmic patterns, because we are in very close spatial relation with the source of the sound. Furthermore, the instruments and singers can make use of the most refined technical subtleties, because nothing will be lost, and the performers themselves can communicate their impressions directly, as in a private conversation. The composer who writes for such conditions enjoys the greatest possible freedom to develop his technique in the most esoteric fields. Almost everything he writes has the potential to be presented clearly and perceived distinctly. It is therefore no surprise that chamber music has always been the preferred medium for technical audacity, as far as the application of musical elements is concerned.
Now this pleasure of conversing familiarly among cultured people, who know how to grasp allusions and nuances in even the most elevated and complex discourse, finds its most natural and characteristic place in Brahms' chamber music. Brahms cultivated it affectionately for many years, after his early works that were mainly for piano, and before tackling symphonic composition in his full maturity, with his First Symphony that Hans von Bülow considered to be a continuation of Beethoven's “Ninth”.
The Quartet in G minor was written in the summer of 1861 and on November 16th of the same year it was performed for the first time in the Hamburg concert hall, with Clara Schumann at the piano. It was very well received by both the public and critics, while in a subsequent performance in Vienna, with the composer at the piano, the Quartet raised some reservations for its academic tone in the construction. Naturally, these were the first more or less poisonous arrows launched by the fierce Viennese critics against Brahms, who would have to wait many years to be considered a musician of great stature in German‐speaking countries.
The Quartet op. 25 is large in scale and quite elaborate instrumentally, with the piano in a dominant position, while fully respecting the contrapuntal interplay with the strings. The first movement is impressive, both for the variety of themes (there are three) and for the richness of the musical discourse, wrapped in an atmosphere of sweet and affectionate melancholy, typically Brahmsian. An introduction based on the first theme is followed by an exposition of the three main themes in the subsequent development the composer uses only the first theme, followed by a recapitulation with all three themes, and the Allegro ends with a classically linear coda. The Intermezzo (Allegro ma non troppo) is a page of delicate lyricism, suffused with a feeling of autumnal poetry the central episode is significant, more slightly lively in its evanescent and chiaroscuro sonorities.
The Andante con moto opens with a warm and relaxed violin melody, projected with intensity of vibration and dragging the other instruments along with it in a romantic mood. In the second part of the movement, the expressive atmosphere becomes vigorous and martial, almost an echo of German folk songs and hymns. The Andante ends with a return to the same dreamy initial texture.
The last movement is a frenzied Rondo with a gipsy flavor, which recalls the spirit of those Hungarian dances so masterfully transcribed by Brahms, who as a young man had made numerous concert tours with the famous violinist from Budapest, Ede Reményi. Twice, among the festive and overwhelming rhythms of a gipsy music, a curious cadence appears, representing, according to a French critic, an unexpected handshake between Bach and Liszt.

Despite the splendor of his orchestral music, Johannes Brahms entrusted his most beautiful, deepest, most authentic inspirations to chamber music. Yet in the first ten years of his career he had shown no interest in chamber music and had devoted himself almost exclusively to the piano and Lieder: only a few unfinished or unpublished works already hinted at his latent predilection for this musical genre, in which the two apparently irreconcilable aspects of his art, the search for formal perfection and the confidential and intimate tone, or, to put it simply, the classical and the romantic side. But this predilection would only begin to manifest itself concretely after 1860. From then on, chamber works followed one another regularly, so that at the end of his life Brahms left a catalog of twenty‐four chamber compositions, divided among a large number of different (and often unusual) ensembles, such as the string sextet or the piano, violin and horn trio. Each of these is used once, twice or at most three times, without creating monumental cycles comparable to Beethoven's seventeen string quartets.
Beyond the variety of the ensembles, Brahms' chamber music has in common a nostalgic and autumnal background color, which extends over intimate tones and conversational inflections as well as tragic meditations and passionate outbursts, over the melancholic sentiment of nature as well as the vivid quotations of popular music, especially gypsy. On a formal level, Brahms doesn't introduce any particular innovations, in that the architecture of the movements and the technique of development and variation of the themes are linked to the Beethoven model, but with a richness of invention and a lightness of writing that always give an impression of total freedom and naturalness. He therefore succeeds in reconciling apparently irreconcilable aspects, romanticism and classicism, intimate expression of feelings and powerful formal construction, sense of melody and contrapuntal skill.
The Quintet in F minor for piano and strings, op. 34, marks the moment Brahms reached full maturity, the work in which all the contrasting aspects of his art reach full expression and complete equilibrium: therefore one of his greatest masterpieces, and not only in the field of chamber music. Like many other of Brahms' masterpieces, its genesis was tormented by doubts and second thoughts. It was conceived in 1861‐1862 as a String Quintet (two violins, viola and two cellos: the same formation used by Schubert in his Quintet in C major), but this version was destroyed after criticism from Joseph Joachim and Clara Schumann, whose advice Brahms always listened to very carefully: in particular Clara suggested that certain themes and developments would require the piano. So Brahms rewrote it for two pianos and had it performed in Vienna in April 1864 but even this time it didn't convince the audience and Clara Schumann identified his weakness in the fact that “it is a work so full of ideas that it requires an entire orchestra, on the piano most of these ideas are lost” and concluded: “Please revise it once again”. Brahms loved this version (he published it a few years later as Sonata for Two Pianos Op. 34b) but once again he followed his friend's advice, but only partially, because instead of an entire orchestra he added a string quartet to the piano.
This third version was realized in the summer of 1864 and the opinion of Brahms' trusted friends and advisors was this time unanimously positive. The great conductor Hermann Levi wrote an enthusiastic letter to Brahms: “The Quintet is beautiful beyond words. Those who have not heard it in its initial form as a String Quintet and Sonata for Two Pianos could not imagine that it was not originally conceived and composed for the current combination of instruments… From a monotonous work for two pianos you have made a work of great beauty, a masterpiece of chamber music. Nothing like it had been heard since 1828” (the year of Schubert's Quintet already mentioned).