Hope Metropolitan Orchestra: Brahms

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NB: This concert takes place in the Great Hall, Hope University Creative Campus, 17 Shaw Street, Liverpool L6 1HP.

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Brahms - Double Concerto for Violin, Cello & Orchestra
Brahms - Symphony no. 2 in D
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Hope Metropolitan Orchestra
Nicholas Byrne (cello)
Leo Byrne (violin)
Conducted by Stephen Pratt

Brahms’ reluctance to tackle symphonic form is well-documented. He spent at least 14 years completing his first symphony, feeling considerable pressure working in what he saw as the shadow of Beethoven. By contrast, the radiant second symphony which was premiered in 1877 – the year after the premiere of the first symphony- was written relatively quickly during a visit to the Austrian province of Carinthia. If the first symphony ends with more than a passing reference to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, this second symphony is Brahms’ ‘Pastoral’ symphony. It is the only one of Brahms’ four symphonies to be designated as being in a major key (despite the triumphant C major ending to the first symphony it is a symphony in C minor), and its warm, expansive mood seems to portray a Brahms who has finally shaken off the shackles and allows himself to be inspired glorious landscape he was visiting.

"... I have had the amusing idea of writing a concerto for violin and cello. If it is at all successful it might give us some fun. You can well imagine the sort of pranks one might play in such a case" - Brahms’ letter to Clara Schumann in 1887

Brahms’ letter to Clara Schumann in 1887 disguises the fact that (as a pianist) he felt somewhat wary of writing of writing a concerto for two string instruments. His violin concerto, premiered in 1878, had a mixed reception and he wrote the Double Concerto as an act of reconciliation with the dedicatee of the Violin Concerto, Joseph Joachim. He had fallen out with Joachim in the interim, largely because he had sided with Joachim’s wife in a fairly public divorce case. In the Double Concerto, Brahms paired Joachim with his chamber music partner and friend Robert Hausmann. Like the Violin Concerto, the piece has mixed reviews following its first performance in October 1887. Listening to both the Violin Concerto and the Double Concerto today, it is hard grasp why this was so; whilst the Double Concerto has not achieved the status of the Violin Concerto, it is nevertheless a fine work which deserves to be heard a lot more.