Usually known simply as the Concerto no. 1 for piano and orchestra, the full title of tonight’s piece is in fact Concerto for piano, trumpet and string orchestra – which is exactly what it is. Shostakovich composed it when he was not yet 30 as part of a whole program – which was never actually completed – intended to extend the Russian instrumental repertoire. The solo piano has clear priority and the trumpet part is important but always secondary, with its own sardonic counterpoint. The whole concerto is full of humour and joie de vivre, and the composer himself wrote that he wanted to «defend the right to laugh at serious music»-
Although there are moments of reflection, with what seem to be miniatures of Shostakovich’s symphonies, the concerto on the whole is rich in dance themes, popular music and parody – caricatures, almost – of music familiar to the public of his time: there are quotes from Beethoven’s Appassionata, from Haydn, Jewish songs from Odessa and bits from the composer’s early music for Erwin Dressel’s opera Poor Columbus. This patchwork effect and its light vein – irreverent and easy-going one moment, cutting and grotesque the next – suggested that Shostakovich’s aim was to recreate the atmosphere of a sound track to a film. However, the formal organization follows the classical pattern, but the two traditional fast movements – the clowning initial Allegretto and the sarcastic Allegro con brio at the end with its catchy galloping rhythm – are separated by a waltzing slow movement; then the Moderato gives us a glimpse of the inspired romantic vein this composer never abandoned in his later works.
The “classics complex” or if you prefer, the “Beethoven syndrome”, which signal the ups and downs of the romantic symphony style, probably explain the long gestation of Johannes Brahms’ First Symphony. He composed it between 1862 and 1876, an incredibly long interval for Brahms who, in his summer holidays when he had no concert engagements, used to turn out four or five works at a time. However, he did not work continuously at the task, because the first movement (without its slow introduction, which was added later) dates from 1862; most of the symphony was completed in summer 1876, though he may well have drafted some parts and made notes in the intervening years.
At the end of September 1876 Symphony No. 1 was ready and there was just time to rehearse for the first performance, which Brahms had decided should be given in Karlsruhe, since the town had a good local orchestra and his previous works had been welcomed there. Conducted by Felix Otto Dessoff, the Symphony met with success on 4 November, and again three days later in Mannheim, where Brahms himself conducted the excellent local musicians. Then it was played in Munich, where there was some resistance, in Wagnerian Leipzig, where it was a grandiose success, and in Breslau. The true “debut” was in Vienna on 17 December, preceded by a piano version for four hands, open only to the critics, whose opinion was divided, but the public was unanimously enthusiastic. Although the Viennese responded even more warmly to Symphony no. 2 the following year, Brahms nevertheless reckoned he had passed the test and would offer more of his music in this demanding setting. The other symphonies, new concertos and two overtures are on the horizon…But was it really the “Beethoven syndrome” that made Brahms hesitate before responding to his numerous admirers who were constantly pressing him to take on the glorious orchestral tradition? It is of course impossible to say, but there may be some truth in Christian M. Schmidt’s suggestion that Brahms waited so long not so much because he was afraid to measure himself against the ghost of Beethoven, as because he wanted to soak up all the tricks of writing for the whole orchestra. In fact if you look at his “catalogue” up to 1876, you can’t help noticing that he had widely explored piano music, lieder, choral and chamber music, with no fear of comparison with their various “heroes”; however, for orchestra he had only written two conventional youthful Serenades, the troublesome Concerto for piano in D minor, and only one more recent work, Variations on a Theme by Haydn, dated 1873.
Brahms explained in numerous letters to Clara Schumann that he did not feel he had completely mastered the language of the symphony, as there always seemed to be something lacking in the timbre of the orchestra. This was why he had written the Haydn Variations, like a test of the orchestra’s possibilities in a work that from all other points of view – especially the form – gave him no problems: he was very much at home with variations, as he had tried them out many a time in piano and chamber music pieces.
So it was not the symphony itself that put Brahms off, but how to sort out the orchestral timbre. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the criticisms of this stupendous creation focus not so much on its formal profile, which was extraordinarily solid, but more on a certain weightiness – typically northern European – in the mix of timbre, and on the severity of its expression, which at first his detractors found excessive.
Excessive or not, this severity is the natural consequence of the elaborate polyphony, which was the composer’s style anyway. After all, though he was Viennese by adoption, he had grown up in the strict, austere atmosphere of Northern Germany, and his mastery of counterpoint was unequalled by his contemporaries.However, leaving aside the hyperbole about how much Brahms’ music showed the influence of Beethoven’s symphonic style, this also goes to show how the formal Viennese symphonic model, although it was obviously present, had little or nothing to do with the substance – if not the spirit – of the form Brahms intended to give this Symphony.
The range of themes is unusually broad but has little in common with the classical two-theme approach. In fact Claude Rostand, a close observer, lists no fewer than three principle themes and five secondary ones in the first movement alone; by the end of the Symphony the list is so long you could probably not find as many in all Beethoven’s symphonies taken together! This is the variation logic already at work here, typical of Brahms’ mature style; the whole structure rests not so much on actual themes as on small, nervy motifs of rhythm and interval that shift and combine in perpetually unstable sound. Each one shifts constantly into the next, and the original “theme” is just one of the many manifestations. Not until the last movement do we find themes in the traditional sense. These are – hardly by chance! – two citations. One is the “Clara theme”, played first by the horn, then by the flute in the slow introduction. It gets it name from a note written by Brahms on a card for Schumann’s widow, with a description of the Alpine valley where he had heard it for the first time. The other is the main theme of the movement, and has been amply commented as explicit homage to the Beethoven of the last symphony.

Enrico Girardi