Many of Brahms's main works underwent farreaching revisions before they reached their final form, a form in which they appear to us today as fully-rounded works, while still bearing within them the marks and scars of their protracted genesis in ways that are aesthetically significant. Typically, it is confessional works such as the First Symphony op. 68, the Piano Quintet op. 34 and the First Piano Concerto op. 15 that appear to have caused the composer the greatest anguish and, as such, tell us as much about the subjective workings of his inner self as they do about his compositional confrontation with traditions and norms that he often felt were inhibitingly overpowering. Few other 19th-century composers were as scrupulously self-critical as Brahms.
All the more remarkable must it seem, initially at least to find that the First Piano Concerto figures in this list: alter all, concertos were intended to give composers - who at this stage in the history of music were generally their own interpreters - an opportunity to appear in a virtuosic, even playful, light. Yet, however difficult this concerto may be in terms of its technical demands, there is absolutely nothing triumphalistically virtuosic about the writing for the soloist: if the often disconcerting difficulties of the piano part are so palpably plain to hear, they must surely be seen as an expression of extreme effort and strain.
The concerto's complex genesis begins with the movements of a sonata for two pianos that Brahms wrote in 1854 but with which he soon grew disenchanted, at least in their existing form. The first movement was rewritten as a symphonic movement, but not even in this form did it meet with Brahms's approval, as is clear from a letter that he wrote to Clara Schumann in 1855: "Just imagine the dream I had last night. I'd turned my unfortunate symphony into a piano concerto and it was this that I found myself playing. From the first movement and Scherzo and a finale, terribly difficult and grand. I was utterly inspired." This suggests a four-movement, symphonic conception, a conception that in the event was not realized until much later, when it was taken over into the Second Piano Concerto. As for its predecessor, Brahms wrote to Clara at the end of 1856: "I am at present writing out a fair copy of the first movement of the concerto. I'm also painting a gentle portrait of you that will be the Adagio." Plans to give the first performance of the new work in Hamburg in 1858 came to nothing, and so the concerto was unveiled to a German audience in Hanover in 1859, with Brahms himself as the soloist and Joseph Joachim as the conductor. A second performance followed five days later at the
Gewandhaus in Leipzig. On both occasions - and especially in Leipzig - the work clearly placed insuperable demands on its audience.
Brahms chose the key ol D minor for this conflictridden composition, a key traditionally associated with sublimity: think of Mozart`s “Don Giovanni" and of his D minor Piano Concerto or of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The work's extreme contrasts - From the grandiose symphonic gesture of the first movement's principal theme to the lyrical intimacy of the contrastive second subject-group and the pent-up energy of the development section - reflect the aesthetics of apparent disorder associated with the sublime in the writings of Classical and Romantic philosophers. The main theme is structurally supported by a chromatic “laments” ground - a Baroque conceit expressive of suffering extended to a full twenty-six bars through pedal-point harmonies. Even the fragmentation of the melodic line by means of expressive rests corresponds to a Baroque figure of musical rhetoric known as "abruptio". The trills that recur throughout the first movement have no ornamental significance, but were thought by Brahms’s contemporaries to represent "shivering fits".
Since the time of Mozart and Beethoven, a concerto’s opening movement had combined the principles of sonata form and (Baroque) concerto form, and in the case of both the present concertos, Brahms fulfils these formal expectations, while investing the movement with an individuality all of his own. Not until the second exposition - for the soloist- do we hear the lyrical and cantabile second subiect-group in F maior, with its hornlike fanfares suggesting the idea of a new departure. The opening tempo marking is "Maestoso", a marking that also informs the movement's initial character. But this now becomes “poco più moderato”, allowing the shorter note-values to achieve greater autonomy and acquire an element of dolce expressivity. In one of his sketches for the second movement, Brahms noted down the words "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini" - "Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord". In this way, the vocal linearity of a movement hom the Mass becomes a homage to Clara Schumann and perhaps also to her husband Robert, who was known as "Mynheer Domine" not only by Brahms himself but by their wider circle of friends. The third movement is cast in sonata-rondo form and is the first to strike a more dancelike note, while also introducing an element of morbid humour, especially in the middle section's fugato, which recalls nothing so much as a development section. The Coda, finally, establishes the key of D major, with all the earlier conflicts and the black depths of human despair apparently now forgotten.
Begun in 1878, the Second Piano Concerto in B flat major op. 83 was not completed until 1881, but there is no evidence that it suffered the same sort of anguished genesis as its predecessor. In this case, it was simply pragmatic reasons, including work on the Violin Concerto, that delayed its completion. That we are dealing here with a symphonic concerto is abundantly clear from the four-movement form of the work, so that there is a curious note of self-irony to Brahms's comment in a letter to Elisabeth von Herzogenberg in 1881: "I keep meaning to tell you that I've written a tiny piano concerto with a delicate little Scherzo." The first and second movements are in themselves monumentally symphonic, and whereas the intimately reduced scoring of the Andante is a direct function of the desired effect, the finale‘s conscious eschewal of timpani and trumpets and, therefore, of the sort of brilliant climaxes that might imply an affirmative apotheosis suggests that the composer had found a new and more sensitive solution to the perennial problem of how to end a work of this nature. Remarkable confirmation of this suggestion may be found a short time afterwards in the "pianissimo" ending of the Third Symphony, an ending almost unique at this time.
The first movement's opening dialogue suggests that we are dealing with a typical slow introduction, but it soon turns out that, far from being an introduction, this is in fact the reel thing. None the less, the listener cannot suspect at this stage that the horn's beautiful yet simple cantilena contains within itself the potential for monumental growth. And however much it may be possible to demonstrate that the piano's figurations are all derived from the movernent's thematic material, their essential gesture remains the solo cadenza that prepares the way for the orchestral exposition. The most striking aspect of this opening movement's formal structure is the beginning of the recapitulation: the listener expects a chorale-like "fortissimo” apotheosis, an expectation hinted at before being subtly undermined by more gently veiled and allusive textures. The cantabile tone of the Andante, with its solo cello, stems from its affinities with songs such as "Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer" (published later the same decade) and, even more significantly, with “Todessehnen” from the Six Songs op. 86, a motif from which is heard on the piano and clarinets. The final movement is an Allegretto grazioso that opens on the subdominant, creating a sense of agreeable harmonic oontusion that harks back to Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, while the minor-hey second subjects with their parallel thirds and sixths are only one of the many features that recall the Hungarian "verbunkos" of the 18th and 19th centuries. Shortly before the end, further "lamento"-like grounds provide a melancholy counterpoint to the all too affirmative major-key jubilation, thereby constituting one of Brahms's most beautiful - and most honest - poetical ideas.