Brahms, Piano Concerto No 2

When he was about to turn forty and had become a renowned musician, Johannes Brahms – who did not feel comfortable with the "war of the romantics" led by Liszt, propelling the German romantic avant-garde – decided to settle permanently in Vienna, in 1872, far from the controversy. After a long search, he found two rooms for rent at No. 4 Karlsgasse. While there, he directed the most important music association of the city as well as made concert tours throughout Europe.

He also visited Italy on pleasure trips. In love with its landscapes, between 1878 and 1893 he made nine trips to the peninsula. After the first of them, he began the sketches of a second piano concerto, twenty-four years after the first, a youthful work composed at the age of 21. But he soon put it aside for the Violin Concerto of 1878. The piano concerto would be left for later.

Piano Concerto No 2

He would finish it three years later, in July 1881. A few months later, during the rehearsal of a different repertoire, he took the opportunity to play it with the orchestra of the pianist and conductor Hans von Büllow, the former son-in-law of Franz Liszt. The conductor sent the score to the seventy-year-old Hungarian celebrity asking for his opinion. Liszt, generous, replied directly to Brahms – who thirty years earlier had declined the invitation to join the romantic avant-garde – in the following terms:

Brahms (1833 -1897) by the time
of the 2nd concerto premiere

"At first reading, the work seemed a bit gray to me. But gradually I have come to understand it better. the work possesses the pregnant character of a distinguished work of art, in which thought and feeling move in noble harmony."

Premiere and diffusion
The public premiere took place in Budapest on November 27, 1881, to great success. Regarded as one of the two or three most difficult concertos in the piano repertoire, Brahms would obtain enormous satisfaction with it in the European cities where he made it known, usually in the company of von Büllow and his orchestra.

The rendition is by the outstanding Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini, accompanied by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abbado, also Italian, very young, both of them. Abbado is no longer in this world. Pollini, fortunately, still is.

Movements:

The work is in four movements. Brahms added a scherzo to the usual tripartite form:

00        Allegro non troppo - A lone horn calls out a simple eight-note melody, answered by the piano rising quietly from the lowest depths. An ensuing cadenza encompasses the entire keyboard.

17:40  Allegro appassionato (Scherzo) - It is the movement added to the usual three of the time. The reason Brahms gave was mere that the allegro was "too simple". And he was right because without it the lovely calm of the Andante would not have acted as an adequate contrast to the first movement.

26:40  Andante. The movement is initiated by the cello, the protagonist of an extended theme. Brahms will later use it to create a song.

39:20  Allegretto grazioso - Ebullient elegance and charm mark the finale’s main theme.