Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Symphony No. 1 in C minor Op. 68

Brahms presented the first movement of this symphony in its piano version to his friends in June 1862. Only in 1876 didi he add an introduction and the three other movements. On November 4th, F.O. Dessoff conducted the symphony in Karlsruhe. It was published by Simrock in Berlin a year later.
Symphony seemed passé in an era of triumphant musical drama and symphonic poem. Those who, like Raff or Bruch, still wrote it in Germany, cultivated the ideals of bourgeois Romanticism. Brahms was taking the road of Beethoven, in itself an ambitious venture. Hence the delay. After all, he had already once failed to complete a symphony, the one begun in 1854, due to the tragic illness of Schumann, his friend and mentor. Its fragments found their way into Piano Concerto in D minor and German Requiem. This time, however, the aim was achieved even too well, since Hans von Bülow called Brahms’s First his "Tenth Symphony.”
∙ The introduction (Un poco sostenuto) exhibits, from its very first bars, the serious style and scale of the project. The climate of Movement One (Allegro) oscillates between anxiety and a desire for consolation, as expressed in the contrast between the extensive thematic groups. Sharp triplet figures and great interval leaps are countered by chorale-like intonations.
∙ The second movement (Andante sostenuto) is of a recapitulative form. It carries four lyrical plots, of which the second (in the oboe; horn and violin solo in the recapitulation) is of extraordinary beauty.
∙ Movement Three (Un poco allegretto e grazioso) is a peculiar and serene scherzo. Brahms used the most significant element of the tradition: the play with rhythm and metre. The calm flow of the main melody has an underlying motion of the third, which suddenly achieves an advantage over the chorale-like trio, breaking up the measure already set in the minds of the audience.
∙ Movement Four is the finale, towards which travels the entire symphony. A gloomy introduction (Adagio) and a chorale-like and a hymn-like chorale episode (Più Andante) is followed by Allegro non troppo, ma con brio based on two great thematic groups. The first, both in its melody and the character of its variations, alludes to the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth – with no harm to Brahms’s most Roamntic symphony.

Maciej Negrey