Brahms, Piano Concerto No 1 - Mov I

 
After Robert Schumann died in a sanatorium in 1856, leaving his wife Clara a widow and the breadwinner of the couple's seven children, family friend Johannes Brahms became as an indispensable support for Clara and, as far as we can imagine, they may have envisioned an eventual union at some point in their future lives, despite the seventeen years difference between Clara and the young musician.

In any case, dreams, if there were any, must have been postponed. Clara had to provide for the care for her children through an endless series of concerts. The young Brahms, a twenty-four-year-old musician, had for his part the urge to consolidate a career as a composer.

In 1857, and after successfully passing a measured examination, Johannes Brahms obtained his first official position upon being hired as a musician of the modest court of Detmold, to serve from September to December of that year. His duties consisted of giving piano lessons to Princess Friederike, directing the choir, and performing as a pianist at the concerts scheduled by the court.

The position had several advantages: the three-month salary was enough to live modestly for a whole year, the princess was a diligent pupil, the choir leadership served his purposes as a professional musician very well, and, above all, he had free mornings, and could dispose of them at will. Johannes occupied them in walking around the surroundings and continue to work on his own compositions, especially those that were already beginning to show a long process of gestation.

Brahms, at 20

Since 1854 he had been working on the composition of a symphony which, not having come to fruition, he tried to transform into a sonata for two pianos, which also did not come to fruition. But the material was there, available. So after his second season in Detmold, and based on the elements that perhaps had resisted taking another form, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor finally was born.

Composed in three movements and with a somewhat extended duration, the concerto had a lukewarm premiere in Hanover on January 22, 1859, with Brahms at the piano and his friend Joseph Joachim conducting. Five days later, in Leipzig, it was received with whistles. Today it is considered a masterpiece. Apparently Brahms was right when, at the end of the Leipzig performance, he sent Joachim these words:

"After all, I am still in the experimental phase and am groping my way along. However, come to think of it... the whistling was indeed excessive."

The first movement, maestoso, is presented here in the rendition of the Hungarian pianist Dénes Várjon, accompanied by the Budapest Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of the spirited violinist and conductor, also Hungarian, Gábor Takács-Nagy, in a performance at the Béla Bartók National Hall, Budapest, in 2010.