Symphony No. 2

It is usually said of Johannes Brahms that he delayed composing a symphony until after he was 40 out of respect for Beethoven’s great set of nine — and from a fear of being found wanting in comparison with his mighty predecessor. There is much truth in this. Indeed, Brahms acknowledged it himself.

Brahms’s rapid rise, at age 20, into an elite circle of leading composers was set in motion by Robert Schumann, who declared publicly that Brahms was destined for a great future in the pedigree of German music. In the company of Schumann and his wife, Clara, Brahms had almost exclusively played chamber music — which for them represented Beethoven’s legacy.  Meanwhile, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (and its “Ode to Joy”) was being elevated by Liszt, Wagner, and their followers as a pointer to the future of symphonic music.

Brahms always regarded symphonic writing as a tough proposition. Self-critical to the point of destroying an unknown number of works that did not satisfy his exacting standards, we should be thankful that Brahms gave us as many as four symphonies.

Brahms’s long-awaited First Symphony premiered in the city of Karlsruhe in November 1876. The composer was anxious to test it in one of the less prominent German cities before allowing performances in Vienna, Leipzig, or Berlin. Such was its success, however, that performances quickly followed in all major cities, at home and abroad. Once he had given one symphony to the world, the rest followed more rapidly — within nine years. In fact, the success of the First and the choice of a perfect spot for his summer vacation worked miracles and produced the Second Symphony the very next year.

Since 1864, there had been a railroad connection from Vienna to Lake Wörth in the southernmost part of Austria, enticing the capital’s well-to-do to spend their summers there. Brahms liked to compose during his holidays, and in the village of Pörtschach on the lake’s northern shore he found a haven: “It is delightful here,” he wrote, “I will never again spend the summer far from the Prater [Vienna’s main street].” Many a great work was to emerge from those summer retreats amid Alpine lakes and mountains, including the Violin Concerto the following year. (Mahler, who built a villa at Maiernigg just across the lake from Pörtschach, would also find inspiration in those surroundings.)

Upon completing the Second Symphony in the summer of 1877, Brahms had no hesitation in offering it first to a Viennese audience. They heard it on December 30 that year and, like its predecessor, it was soon taken up by the great orchestras of the world. There are dark passages and no lack of tension, but on the whole, this is a sunny work, full of light and vivacity, that leaves listeners in a state of elation.

This impression is most strongly conveyed by the charming third movement, which can make the intricacies and tensions of the first two movements fade into memory, and even compel audiences to overlook the technical skill of the brilliant finale, which sweeps away everything before it. The third movement is a kind of intermezzo, in which a gentle folksy melody is treated as a recurring rondo theme, alternating with two equally charming episodes. The first is a fairylike transformation of the initial theme, sped up; the second is a scherzo-like dance full of cross-accents and chattering exchanges between winds and strings. Brahms’s debt is here more to Mendelssohn and Schumann than to Beethoven.

Is there a darker spirit elsewhere at work? Within a few bars of the opening of the first movement, the trombones are heard lurking in the shadows and, in the development, those hints turn into real threats when the trombones show their teeth in overlapping, grinding entries. As if in remorse, the trombones play a soothing role in the slow movement, where Brahms explores intricate counterpoint, with at least two themes intertwining at any given moment. If the trombones are a sinister force in the first two movements, they step proudly forward in the last movement to close the symphony with the most thrilling D-major triad in all symphonic music.

The cellos similarly have a leading role, with an especially ravishing melody (supported by the violas) as the second subject of the first movement, and an important expressive line in the slow movement. Meanwhile, the first horn takes the spotlight with its superbly shaped solo in the coda of the first movement, which is followed by the first violins indulging their taste for broad melody on their lower strings — as if this is the point towards which the entire edifice of the first movement had been leading.

In Brahms, there are always great moments like this. If we get too excited by one, however, we risk overlooking the next. Eagerness mixed with quiet patience rewards the alert and focused listener.

— Hugh Macdonald

Hugh Macdonald is Avis H. Blewett Professor Emeritus of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. He has written books on Beethoven, Berlioz, Bizet, and Scriabin, as well as Music in 1853: The Biography of a Year.