Arthur Rubinstein leads us on the next leg of our expedition through Brahms's First Piano Concerto

Being post no. 8 in our curious Brahms blog odyssey
(See the box "THE PATH TO BRAHMS 1: The series so far" at the end of the post)

Final encore: Within two weeks of his 88th birthday, the legendary Arthur Rubinstein (Jan. 28, 1887 - Dec. 20, 1982) concluded his last recital -- a "Benefit Concert for Israel" at Ambassador College in Pasadena on Jan. 15, 1975 -- in affectionate mode, with Mendelssohn's "Spinning Song" (from Book VI of the Songs Without Words, Op. 67, No. 4). The Pasadena recital turned out to be by no means his final public performance, however -- see below.

by Ken

After our May 10 "after-post" detour, "A proper quick-sampling of the three Brahms piano quartets," it was time to get back to business, or at least to the immediately preceding digression, which is to say the diversion by which Brahms's first clear shot at a symphony turned -- over a five-year period -- into the D minor Piano Concerto, which we began investigating in the May 9 post "Even if Brahms's new work-in-progress was going to be a piano concerto rather than a symphony, he still had to create forms for it," in which we managed to get through the mammoth first movement. Although the technology-induced panic chronicled in today's "emergency post tease" ("With a bunch of audio clips still to be made, we glimpse where we're headed in our quick look at the Brahms concertos") has messed up my plan for moving on through the other three Brahms concertos, which we were at least able to sample therein, it hasn't changed the rest of the plan for this main post: to get us to the finish line of the D minor Concerto.


THROUGH ALL OF TODAY'S HUBBUB, THE SPIRIT OF ARTHUR
RUBINSTEIN HAS BEEN WAITING FOR US TO CATCH UP

And that "Spinning Song" he gave us at age 88 is certainly perking me up. Amazingly, as I intimated in the photo caption above, after the 1975 "Benefit Concert for Israel," A.R. had yet another chapter to write. On April 6 and 7 of the following year, now 89, with the microphones live, he performed (and recorded) the Brahms First Piano Concerto with Zubin Mehta and the Israel Philharmonic in Tel Aviv's Mann Auditorium. Apropos of that event, he wrote a lovely liner note for the original Decca LP, which began:

I fell in love with the D minor Concerto of Brahms when I was 12 years old and studying the piano with Professor Heinrich Barth in Berlin. This Concerto was certainly the climax of the great passion I felt for Brahms, and although Barth found me too young to be able to grasp the full meaning of this colossal work, I succeeded in learning it by myself and played some parts of it to Joseph Joachim [1813-1907, the legendary violinist, conductor, and looming musical presence who had been a most trusted confidant of Brahms, about and from whom we'll be hearing a lot more before we're done -- Ed.], who to my great joy approved my conception of it. Joachim, the proud owner of this masterpiece, received the most valuable information from Brahms himself about the tempi, the dynamics, and many precious details, which he kindly passed on to me.

Wow, there's so much to think about in this paragraph. Bearing in mind that A.R. was 12 when he began his studies with Heinrich Barth and subsequently had his fateful meeting with Joachim, we should remember that in the year when he turned 12, 1899, Brahms had been dead less than a dozen years. And the via-Joachim connection to Brahms, for whom A.R.'s 12-year-old self already felt such great passion, was if anything stronger and more direct than the 89-year-old A.R. let on. In the creation of the D minor Piano Concerto, Joachim was a key player.


THE 89-YEAR-OLD A.R. CALLED HIS NEW RECORDING
OF THE CONCERTO "PERHAPS THE MOST INTENSE ONE"

Jumping to the end of that Decca liner note, we read:

This is my fourth recording of the Brahms D minor Concerto. It is perhaps the most intense one. I played it with a great handicap as my eyesight as nearly gone at the time of the recording. Zubin Mehta's conducting of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra was a constant inspiration to me, and his reading of the work will remain unforgettable in my mind.

Following the line from Brahms to Joachim to A.R., we're about to sample three Rubinstein recordings of the concerto -- the ones I know (unless A.R. was counting the video recording he made in Amsterdam, one of a group of works videotaped in August 1973 (at the comparatively spritely age of 86) he performed for the cameras with the Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink. (I see the Brahms has been posted on YouTube.)

At this point it's time to bring back the advance scout we pressed into service for our journey through the first movement of the D minor Piano Concerto, the British music critic and writer Richard Osborne, who 40-plus years ago produced a thoughtful and useful essay for the booklet that accompanied Philips' release of Claudio Arrau's 1979 recording of both Brahms piano concertos (with, it just so happens, Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra). I should point out again that these many decades later R.O. is still writing actively.

We've already talked about the complicated gestation of Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto, which began in 1854 with the repurposing of what the young composer thought at first would evolve into a symphony, something he dearly wanted to accomplish. We might recall that the symphony itself was a repurposing: out of several movements he had composed for a sonata for two pianos. As we saw last time, Brahms may have given up on his immediate symphonic prospects, but his highly skilled pianist's instincts told him the immense first movement that had been taking shape could be made to work in dialogue between solo piano and orchestra.

This time he was right. Which doesn't mean that the path to completion was short or easy. It wasn't till January 1889 that the composer was the soloist in the first public performance of a "complete" -- but by no means "completed" -- form of the concerto. Throughout that time his most trusted counselor, to whom he sent each movement as he felt it ready, was none other than his friend Joseph Joachim (less than two years older than himself), agonizing as he awaited feedback.


BEFORE WE RESUME EXPLORING THE CONCERTO,
WE NEED TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THIS PERIOD

We've already touched on the relationship that developed between the rising young composer and his friends and patrons the Schumanns. Without the advocacy of Robert Schumann, the great writer about as well as of music, Brahms wouldn't have been rising anywhere near so rapidly. At this point let's back up a year, to 1853, and turn the proceedings over to Richard Osborne:

In April 1853, the 19-year-old Brahms left home and a despondent family to take part in a concert tour arranged by the impulsive young violinist, Remenyi. A month later the party reached the Court of Hanover where the young Joseph Joachim was Konzertmeister.

It was a significant meeting for Brahms (one of several during the year) -- and rather more significant than that with Liszt in Weimar a month later (Reményi was dazzled out of his wits, but the astute young Brahms sensed no point of contact between himself and the waywardly brilliant Lisztians). Within a few weeks of the Weimar visit Brahms was back with Joachim in Göttingen, and though he might have offended the followers of the "New German" school, he had impressed Joachim sufficiently to enable him to scrape together enough money for an August walking-tour along the Rhine. It was the fulfillment of a long-cherished dream, something we can still experience through the F minor Piano Sonata which Brahms was working on at the time.

The Schumanns, Clara (1816-1896) and Robert (1810-1856), c1850

Before the sonata was completed, however, Brahms received a further, decisive stimulus. He was persuaded to visit the Schumanns in Düsseldorf. As his friends had predicted, the Schumanns were deeply impressed by Brahms, by his sympathetic personality and the grandeur of his playing. Brahms, in his turn, was newly contented. "They were high festival days which really made you live," he wrote in retrospect. But the "festival days" were short-lived, for on February 27 Schumann, on the verge of nervous collapse, attempted to drown himself in the Rhine. It was a shattering blow to Brahms. With his creative powers at a new flood he completed the first draft of his profoundly lyrical B major Piano Trio and, almost immediately, began work again on a sonata for two pianos which was to emerge, five years later, as the great D minor Piano Concerto.

HOLD ON, WE NEED TO PAUSE HERE

Am I the only one who hears a glitch in what R.O. presents here as a seamless flow: "It was a shattering blow to Brahms. With his creative powers at a new flood he completed . . . ."

So, in sentence 1 we have Brahms suffering this "shattering blow," and at that very time, in sentence 2, we have his creative powers "at a new flood"? Hmm. Not impossible, I suppose, especially since this apparently was the case. It just seems to me that something is missing in the narrative, if only an acknowledgment that this juxtaposition, while not impossible, is way not obvious. It might help to listen to those creative powers flooding in the F minor Piano Sonata, "which Brahms was working on" before his meeting with the Schumanns and completed after. A helpful YouTube poster has given us a complete performance illustrated with the score of the sonata, complete with movement time cues and a fine little commentary on the piece. My only problem is that I'm not really persuaded by the performance, by Peter Rösel.

This sprawling five-movement piece, while unquestionably a milestone in Brahms's compositional development and a remarkable creation in its own right is a sprawling five-movement affair that stretches up toward 40 minutes and for reasons that go well beyond its length, it isn't easy to bring off. In addition to its considerable technical challenges, it needs to be fully imagined, and from the inside. (It's interesting to note, first, that by this tender age Brahms had already completed two half-hour-plus piano sonatas, which it's generally agreed for all their earnestness didn't really work, and second, that for what it's worth, after this one, in which he seemed at least after a fashion to "solve" the piano-sonata problem, he never wrote another.)


LET'S PICK UP AGAIN WITH RICHARD OSBORNE

So here we are in that crucial time period for Brahms, from the initial inspiration for a piano concerto in 1854 to the performance by the composer of at least a first version in January 1859.

For five years he held in balance these initial creative impulses, fashioning a viable musical form from his raw materials, occasionally driving himself to the point of desperation (as late as the spring of 1858 he was complaining to Joachim "it is all too much interwoven"). New influences also impinged on him. His relationship with Clara Schumann deepened, became more complex after Schumann's death in 1856 [One thing we need to remember is that from the time Robert was institutionalized after his suicide attempt, Clara was left on her own with their seven children, a source of considerable concern to Brahms -- Ed.], but, equally, he found fresh ease and contentment in Detmold where he wrote the engaging Serenade, op. 11 [We should probably have a listen to that too, maybe look at both Brahms orchestral serenades; here the YouTube offerings are stronger, including again one with score, with a reasonably alert performance by the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia under Anshel Brusilow -- Ed.], and there was a brief, romantic love-affair with the beautiful Agathe von Siebold. In reality, however, the initial impulse was never lost. The finished work is one of great tragic power, with a breadth and a concentration beyond the dreams of the passionate F minor Sonata.

AS WE ALREADY KNOW, THE PUBLIC DIDN'T TAKE
AT ALL TO BRAHMS'S IDEA OF A PIANO CONCERTO

Which was a jolt for the ambitious young composer, and perhaps a crucial teaching moment too. He had to develop the confidence, not easy with his inherently powerful self-critical faculty, to trust in his vision for the form of a piece he was creating. He arrived at a point, we should recall, where he foresaw that in time the public would come around on the D minor Piano Concerto, and he also foresaw, in what proved to be a good deal further down the line, he would be giving that public a very different sort of piano concerto. As we'll see, though, it would still be his idea of what that concerto was going to be.

Before we move on to the second movement of the D minor Concerto, in case we want to refresh our memory of the first movement. Today's clip-making crisis argued against offering new clips. I think we can manage well enough hearing the same ones we heard before.

BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15:
i. Maestoso


Leon Fleisher, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Epic-CBS-Sony, recorded in Severance Hall, Feb. 21-22, 1958

Clifford Curzon, piano; Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Eduard van Beinum, cond. Decca, recorded in the Concertgebouw, May 1953

Clifford Curzon, piano; London Symphony Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Decca, recorded in Kingsway Hall, May 1962

Rudolf Serkin, piano; Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy, cond. Columbia-CBS-Sony, recorded in Town Hall, Dec. 10, 1961

Rudolf Serkin, piano; Cleveland Orchestra, George Szell, cond. Epic-CBS-Sony, recorded in Severance Hall, Apr. 19-20, 1968

SO LET'S PROCEED TO THE ADAGIO -- FINALLY!

If you've been waiting to hear Arthur Rubinstein, we're getting close. We might note that the Adagio was the last of the concerto's movements to be written. Before we hear it, Richard Osborne has some interesting and highly useful questions.

The beautiful and long-breathed slow movement would seem to express the sublimity of Brahms's response to Schumann's suffering. In December 1856, however, Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann: "I am making a gentle portrait of you in the form of an adagio." The very first piano line, molto dolce ed espressivo, has a haunting, living beauty. Yet has the movement to be an elegy or a portrait? Isn't it both and an expression, too, of Clara's beauty of character?

After two bars' rest the piano textures become surer and the rise of the melody suggests, unambiguously, the mood of the Benedictus, the inscription originally written by Brahms over the movement. [The influential Vienna-based critic Eduard] Hanslick once noted how Brahms's music, like Schumann's, wa marked out by "its continence and inner nobility . . . everything is sincere and truthful" (cf. Beethoven, too: there are memories here of the Adagio of his E-flat Concerto) and certainly the gentle, improvisatory musings, the dark impassioned string lines, the welling trills, and the five simple drum beats at the close all suggest a very complete musical and human experience.

We're ready now for Maestro Rubinstein, and preposterous as it may seem for an 89-year-old pianist to be tackling as unforgiving a body-breaker as the Brahms D minor Concerto (in live performance, remember), when it comes to the Adagio in particular, we may recall A.R.'s liner-note thought that this, his fourth recording of the concerto, is "perhaps the most intense one."

BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15:
ii. Adagio


Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Arthur Rubinstein, cond. RCA, recorded in Orchestra Hall, Apr. 17, 1954

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Apr. 21-22, 1964

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Zubin Mehta, cond. Decca, recorded live in Mann Auditorium, Tel Aviv, Apr. 6-7, 1976


JUST AS PERFORMERS FREQUENTLY DO, WE'RE GOING TO PROCEED DIRECTLY INTO THE CONCLUDING RONDO

Composers of the Classical era had been concluding their Classical-style concertos with rondos as long as they had been writing Classical-style concertos. Isn't it one of the great pleasures of Mozart's 30 or so "mature" concertos seeing what sort of rondo he would come up with to round out the first two movements? Naturally Beethoven, being Beethoven, had most notably in his piano concertos significantly raised the stakes of the rondo game. And now it was Brahms's turn. The rondo is at heart a playful form, and "play" is something we haven't had a lot of in the D minor Concerto's earlier movements. (For what it's worth, in the Moravec-Supraphon Brahms D minor, from which we're about to hear the Rondo, the movement heading is given, not as the usual "Allegro non troppo," but as "Allegro giocoso non troppo" -- which raises the obvious question, one I'm doubtful that Brahms intended, as to whether it's the "allegro" or the "giocoso" [i.e., "playful"; in "giocoso" we can hear our word "joke"] that's supposed to be "not too much.")

Mr. Osborne?

The opening of the finale, with its thrusting, syncopated rhythmic energy, the piano driving upwards through a minor triad, and, eventually, the fine striding second subject (with its bold, rising triplet -- a very Brahmsian fingerprint), suggest grief assuaged by a sheer will to live. The entral episodes are lyrical and perfectly scaled, the delicate counterpoint providing a valuable point of repose before fresh excursions in which biano and basses reach for seemingly limitless reserves of tone. Release comes only in the piano's cadenza-like quasi fantasia with its dreamy-eyed postlude and droning oboes and bassons. It is all as fresh and clear as an engraving by Dürer, and a perfect foil to the concerto's impetuous coda. Brahms ran into many difficulties with this movement (all chronicled at length in his letters to Joachim), yet how characteristic it is -- searching, restless, affirmative cathartic.

For this extremely muscular Rondo we've got a perhaps curious complement of pianists. The first two, Bruno Leonardo Gelber and Ivan Moravec, are accomplished technicians whom I more inclined to think of in the "poetic-sensitive" camp, and after not being able to accommodate them in either of the earlier movements, where their presence might have been less surprising, well, by gosh here they are! Whereas Van Cliburn, a more typical type of "strongman-pianist" seems made to order for this assignment.

BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15:
iii. Rondo (Allegro non troppo)


Ivan Moravec, piano; Czech Philharmonic, Jiří Bělohlávek, cond. Supraphon, recorded in Dvořák Hall of the House of Artists, Prague, Sept. 26-Oct. 4, 1989

Bruno Leonardo Gelber, piano; Munich Philharmonic, Franz-Paul Decker, cond. EMI, recorded in the Bürgerbräu, Munich, June 1965

Van Cliburn, piano; Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded in Symphony Hall, Mar. 16-18, 1964


HOW ABOUT WE HEAR THE WHOLE THING?

Okay, can do. I don't think anyone will be too proprietary if we slip in this recording, presumably connected somehow to the Belfast-born pianist Barry Douglas's gold-medal win at the 1986 International Tchaikovsky Competition (as it's always noted, the first "outright" of the piano gold medal by a non-Russian since Van Cliburn in 1958). I see that the very gradual timings are quite similar to those of Douglas's RCA recording with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski and the London Symphony, which drove a 2019 Amazon reviewer David A. apoplectic ("Ultra low-energy, plodding Brahms; self-indulgent and boring," he called it, and that's before the gloves came off). I've never heard the Douglas-Skrowaczewski recording, but pulling this one off the shelf where it's been residing who-knows-how-long, I have to say that while David A.'s points are well argued, and I certainly wouldn't want to hear the piece played this way all the time, I kind of enjoyed it -- I think the piece holds up to the kind of minute inspection it's subjected to. See what you think!

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THE PATH TO BRAHMS 1: The series so far

• "Arthur Rubinstein leads us on the next leg of our expedition through Brahms's First Piano Concerto" [5/16/2021]

With many digressions we hear three Arthur Rubinstein perfs of the Adagio of Op. 15; then Ivan Moravec, Bruno Leonardo Gelber and Van Cliburn play the Rondo

• "Emergency post tease: With a bunch of audio clips still to be made, we glimpse where we're headed in our quick look at the Brahms concertos" [5/16/2021]

In anticipation of "doing" the 2nd and 3rd mvmts of the Brahms D minor Piano Concerto, a quick survey of the 1st mvmts of all 4 Brahms concertos + "beautiful" Brahms (2 mvmts)

• "After-post: As promised, here's a proper quick-sampling of the three Brahms piano quartets" [5/10/2021]

By Borodin Trio et al.: 3 perfs each of 1st mvmt of all 3 Brahms piano quartets (+ Schoenberg orch. of No. 1)

• "Even if Brahms's new work-in-progress was going to be a piano concerto rather than a symphony, he still had to create forms for it" (aka Part 2 of "More 'pre-post' than 'tease' ") [5/9/2021]

Brahms & Beethoven mini-clips. Perfs A-B-C of Brahms Piano Cto No. 1 = Fleisher-Szell-Cleveland, Curzon-Szell-LSO, Serkin-Szell-Cleveland; bonus perfs = Curzon-van Beinum, Serkin-Ormandy

• "More 'pre-post' than 'tease': If our sights are set on Brahms's First Symphony, why are we listening to his First Piano Concerto? (Part 1)" [5/6/2021]

"Perfs A-B-C" (+ 2 bonus perfs!) of i. Un poco sostenuto

•"Just a bit more teasing before we get to the main post . . ." [5/4/2021]

Perfs of 2 Mystery Movements (Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto, iii. Un poco allegretto e grazioso) by Toscanini, Mackerras, Bernstein

• "Post tease: How do we -- or maybe I mean how did Brahms -- get to this from this?" [5/2/2021]

Start and finish of Mystery Movement (Brahms 1: ii. Andante sostenuto). Perfs by Walter, Herbig, Barbirolli, Furtwängler, Celibidache, Toscanini

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