Don't like Brahms? This is the symphony to change your mind

Anyone who thinks Brahms’s music is always tediously dark-brown and solemn should give this symphony a try. It’s bright as day, and the springing rhythms and horn-drenched sound breathes the fresh air of the Austrian countryside where it was composed. But the piece has a melancholy side too.

Background

By 1877, when this symphony was composed, Brahms had become the lynchpin of Viennese musical life. His mastery of the old forms awed the public, and made him seem the natural heir to another great Vienna-based composer, Beethoven. Although only 44, he had the rotund figure and grey-flecked beard of an older man, and his bachelor routine of hard work leavened with daily lunches at his favourite inn “The Red Hedgehog” was now well-established.  The previous year, he’d finished his mighty, dark-toned First Symphony, after a 20-year labour, and the public – despite his reputation – had found it tough going. This one, composed during his summer holiday in a lakeside village in the deep south of Austria, went down a storm.

Why it’s so great

Like Beethoven, Brahms was a master of the art of taking plain material and turning it into gold, an art that’s especially useful for building big spans of music. That’s what makes his symphonies so great.

Brahms’s symphonies are gripping, but many would argue that they lack charm. That can’t, however, be said of No 2. It has charm aplenty, especially in the gently dancing third movement, and the very beginning could melt even the most confirmed Brahms-sceptic.

Another thing that makes this symphony special is its very delicate emotional palette. It’s often described as “sunny”, but Brahms himself said it has a melancholy side, and it can be something as tiny as a single new note that turns one mood into the other.

Last but not least, it has the most uproarious, unbuttoned finale Brahms ever wrote.

What to listen out for

This performance from the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Kurt Masur was given on November 9, 2009, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

First movement: Allegro ma non troppo (Fast but not too fast)

Three ideas emerge like morning sun right at the beginning, so tightly bound together they seem like one: first a four-note cello phrase, a simple but golden horn melody in the horns, and alternating with the horns a rising phrase in the flutes and oboes. These will come back again and again, but first comes a radiant violin melody at 1.53, and at 2.57 one of those sad-happy ideas that are this symphony’s hallmark. At 5.55, the central section where all these ideas are developed launches off with the horn melody, now cloudy rather than sunny. A strenuous contrapuntal play with the flute/oboe melody at 6.31 is followed by the cello phrase flung out severely by the trombones at 7.04. The final section where all the ideas return begins at 9.17.  At 13.40, the music seems to be getting ready for a serene major-key ending, but then the solo horn launches a wonderful excursion into strange harmonic realms.

Second movement: Adagio non troppo (Slow but not too slow)

This begins with a richly ambiguous, dark-warm cello melody, which leads to a new idea played by a solo horn at 17.53. His tune is exactly echoed at roughly nine-second intervals in a typically Brahmsian bit of academic counterpoint, first by oboes, then flutes, then cellos and basses. At 19.02, the music moves to a swaying 12/8 tempo (ONE-two-three FOUR-five six etc), with a melody that keeps moving just before the pulse (this is a good example of Brahms’s rhythmic subtlety). At 21.15 and 21.44, hints of the opening cello melody prepare us for the proper return of the opening section at 22.17, with the cello melody now in bassoons. A brief return of the “academic counterpoint” at 23.17 soon leads to a severe and almost anguished climax at 23.51.  At 24.51, the wonderful coda (closing section) begins with the opening melody, which accretes fascinating layers of rhythmic complication as it descends into the shadows.

Third movement: Allegretto Grazioso (moderately fast, gracefully)

This movement kicks off with a guileless oboe melody in a gentle ONE-two-three time. Then comes a surprise at 27.00, with a sudden flip to a much faster section in ONE-two-three-four time. That scurrying melodic idea in the violins is actually a new version of the oboe melody you’ve just heard. This builds to a new idea at 27.14, but at 27.52 the original oboe melody reappears, shyly at first. At 28.44, the fast section returns, now in ONE-two-three time, with vigorous accents that fall sometimes on the first beat, sometimes on the third. The original oboe melody reappears 29.30, before a beautiful Coda winds things up from 30.38.

Fourth movement: Allegro con spirito (Fast, with spirit)

The finale begins in a mood of suppressed excitement unique in Brahms before bursting out at 32.00. From then on, it’s a constant rush of energy. A properly Brahmsian expansive melody at 33.08 leads at 34.36 to an emphatic ‘”Scotch-snap” tune that sounds like Haydn at his most rustic. At 34.55, the opening seems to come back, but almost immediately veers off into the middle section (“development”) where things heard earlier are transformed. Listen out at 36.08 for the very first idea, now turned into a mysterious undulation. An astonishing passage reminiscent of Mahler’s First Symphony (at 37.00) leads to the return of the opening section at 37.19. At 40.26, the Coda (closing section) is ushered in by a return of the “undulation” idea, but this is soon swept away by the final whirlwind of excitement.

Recommended recordings

For fine detail and a beautifully transparent sound, the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s recording conducted by Vladimir Jurowski is unbeatable. The Leipzig Gewandhaus’s recording under Riccardo Chailly on Decca is more warmly lyrical. But both are put in the shade by the impassioned recording made in 1952 by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra led by greatest Brahms conductor ever, Wilhelm Furtw?ngler, on Warner Classics.

Tell Ivan your thoughts

Are you a Brahms lover or sceptic? Ivan will be in the comments section below between 4pm and 5pm on Wednesday June 10.