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AimezvousBrahms?
James Jolly (/users/james-jolly)
JamesJollytalksBrahmswithconductorsBernard
HaitinkandMarinAlsop,bothatworkon
symphonycycles
What does the name 'Brahms' conjure up in your mind? For most
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composer in the entire world. His music was played across the USA as
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AimezvousBrahms?|gramophone.co.uk
his disciples took up posts in the musical capitals of the New World.
He had amassed a considerable fortune almost entirely from the
royalties to his music with occasional supplements from performing.
He was a composer who did not rely on financial patronage but who
truly lived off his talent and was beholden to no one. Today, Brahms's
music particularly his orchestral music has a grip on the
repertoire like few others, his god Beethoven apart. No other
composer offers a symphonic legacy that is so well balanced, so
concentrated and at such an equally high level: four works, like the
four sides of a square, that comprise a unit of great strength and
integrity. It's no surprise that barely a week (hardly even a day) goes
by without a performance of one of his symphonies somewhere in the
world; in the US during the 2004-05 season Brahms, according to the
American Symphony Orchestra League, will be the fourth mostperformed composer. On disc, Brahms symphony cycles have
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AimezvousBrahms?|gramophone.co.uk
For Haitink, who is just concluding his third Brahms cycle on disc, the
composer has been with him 'right from the beginning. But I have
learned by trial and error. I've discovered that concert organisers,
particularly on the Continent, give Brahms symphonies to young
conductors "Let him do a Brahms symphony!" but it's not that
easy. You need maybe now that I'm older I would say this but
you need more experience to bring off Brahms well. It's difficult to
say why. I think when we think of Brahms we all conjure up a huge,
inflated sound and that is totally wrong because Brahms wrote so
much wonderful chamber music which is a fine indication of the
textures he was after. If you look at the scores of the symphonies it's
amazing how often he writes piano dolce or pianissimo
dolce.Dolcecomes up so often, even more than with Beethoven, and
Beethoven uses that "warning" a lot. Take the beginning of Brahms's
Fourth Symphony: it's very often played far too loud, but then you
can't build it any more. When he uses piano, he creates a beautiful
sound and when you start at that level you can make a huge buildup, otherwise, with that movement in particular, it gets a little stale.
That is one of the secrets of playing Brahms: you have to be very
acute about how you pace the dynamics.'
One of the intriguing things about the composer is how
extraordinarily well he covered his tracks, both personal and musical.
He left virtually no drafts, few first thoughts or even first versions.
The published work we have is virtually all there is. For Alsop,
Brahms's witnessing at close hand Robert Schumann's mental decline,
and the public interest in it, is key. 'I think Brahms is very difficult to
get a handle on. From seeing Schumann in the limelight and watching
how the paparazzi of the time worked, he was extremely aware and
conscious of not leaving much of a trail. So he rarely documented
anything, he rarely kept notebooks and sketches, so most of what we
know is anecdotal or conjecture. I think that was all very intentional.'
Naturally this presents the double-edged situation where almost
every piece of his is in its finished text. 'Before I started work on the
symphonies I spoke with the Brahms expert Robert Pascall. We went
through the scores and what you find are mostly dynamic issues, the
kinds of minor things that you get when you transfer from a
manuscript to a print where the publisher or editor would make some
changes, often unintentionally but they're really tiny alongside,
say, Mahler's. Maybe that's a nice element not to have to agonise
over. But one agonises in different ways, but then that's great, too.
You can imbue his music with a lot of your own associations.'
For Haitink, the question of Brahms the man and Brahms's music
and indeed any composer and his music presents the ultimate
conundrum. 'How far the character of an artist has influence on his
actual creative process one never knows. I always try to read the
biography and read around the composer. It's always good to do but
as a performer one doesn't learn anything from it strangely enough,
but to be confronted again by the man and the artist is important. It
is an enormous riddle to me. How does the personal life of an artist
influence his music? Look at Mozart: during his most miserable last
years he wrote extremely sad pieces but always balanced by humour
or a slight optimism. Maybe not the G minor Symphony [No 40] which
is a very dark brooding work, but K543 [No 39] and theJupiterare
written by a man who was broke, people ignored him, perhaps he
gambled all his money and his credibility away. He was maybe a very
lonely man and he writes this fantastic C major music. It's amazing!'
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Over the years, Haitink admits, his attitude to the music has changed.
'I'm much more touched by it, much more intrigued by it. Brahms was
not an easy man and I think you can hear that in his music. One of
the famous things he said when he left an evening gathering was "If I
haven't offended someone here, I apologise!" He was difficult. People
always think of this man with the beard, relaxing with his cigar, but
there was so much more to him that that. I was in the Musikverein in
Vienna a while back where he left his library and it's amazing
what is there. He was an incredibly well-read man, very educated. But
I think he was a very lonely man, too.'
Read the booklet-note or programme-note to any Brahms symphony
and you'll learn that the composer waited until middle age to unveil
his first work in the genre well after he'd grown that splendid
beard and taken up the mantle of upholder of German music. He
spoke often of the towering example of Beethoven's remarkable nine
symphonies. But scale alone did not deter him one of Brahms's
earliest works is the Piano Sonata in F minor, Op 5, a five-movement
work of titanic proportions and reach. Perhaps a need to develop an
orchestral language delayed his first attempts, but by the time he
started work on his First Symphony, some time in the mid-1860s,
he'd already written two serenades (admittedly for small ensemble)
and the huge (in every respect) First Piano Concerto. When he did
grapple with the symphony he published two in relatively short
succession (1877 and 1878) and then, before a decade was through,
another two, again almost as a pair (1884 and 1886). So when we
reach Brahms's First Symphony, we are not encountering the work of
a tyro composer: it is the mature embracing of a form that he always
viewed with dread. 'You don't know what it is like,' he once told the
conductor Hermann Levi, 'always to hear that giant marching along
behind me'.
How many other composers have started their first symphony in so
imposing and confident a way? The steady tread pounded out as
if to acknowledge that marching giant but defiantly refusing to be
cowed by it. For Alsop, the key to interpreting the First is not to allow
indulgence. 'You cannot wallow. There's an organic tempo in each
symphony. For me, I feel there is a very particular tempo but I've
certainly heard some dramatic extremes. I think it just depends on
what one's take on this pulse at the beginning is. If it's a heartbeat
then for me it has to be manageable I'm not having to run a sixminute mile. But if it's not, and is just a general kind of life-pulse,
then I can understand speeding it up. One has to be very committed
to it.
'The music is so strong. More than with any other composer the
timpanist shapes Brahms for me. It's absolutely critical to have
someone who understands not only pacing and timing, but also the
colour of sound and the weight of sound. One of the things I adore
about Brahms is his ability to have one foot firmly anchored in the
tradition of music. He was famed for his adoration of Beethoven, but
also of Bach as well and that leads to his beautiful bass-line
construction but he was also completely aware of where music was
heading. And to be able to straddle those two worlds successfully is
his real genius. Take his choice of instrumentation in the First
Symphony he saves the trombones for the last movement just so they
were still something special. Or to use the tuba in only one symphony
to make these choices, to use horns as if they were still natural
instruments even though he didn't need to. He could really play
tribute to the past but look ahead to the future so strongly.'
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