Brahms Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15

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Track List

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis Arranged by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op.15 Composed by Johannes Brahms
Maestoso
Adagio
Rondo: Allegro non troppo

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Program Notes

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Ralph Vaughan Williams was a big, burly, indestructible man who—among the great composers of Western art music—enjoyed a creative life of remarkable length. He was born in Gloucestershire on October 12, 1872, and died in London on August 26, 1958; he completed the Ninth Symphony only a short time before his death at the age of eighty-six. Already a published composer at nineteen, his was a sixty-five-year record of productivity. There was money in the family, and Vaughan Williams was able to take his time before committing himself entirely to a life of composition. As a boy, he learned several instruments. “I had been taught the pianoforte, which I never could play, and the violin, which was my musical salvation.” At the Royal College of Music he studied with Stanford and Parry, and was especially indebted to the latter. “We pupils of Parry have, if we have been wise, inherited from Parry the great English choral tradition which Tallis passed on to Byrd, Byrd to Gibbons, Gibbons to Purcell, Purcell to Battishill and Greene, and they in turn through the Wesleys to Parry. He has passed the torch to us, and it is our duty to keep it alight.” Unlike Elgar, Vaughan Williams rejected the German 19th-century tradition in favor of the English folk song and choral tradition. Temperamentally he was never able to identify with the German school. “To this day the Beethoven idiom repels me,” he wrote as an old man, adding, “but I hope I have at last learnt to see the greatness that lies behind the idiom that I dislike, and at the same time to see an occasional weakness behind the Bach idiom which I love.”

First performed in Gloucester Cathedral at the 1910 Three Choirs Festival, the Fantasia is based on a melody (a Psalm tune) composed by Thomas Tallis in 1567. Vaughan Williams had come across the melody in the course of editing a new English Hymnal. The Times music critic wrote of the premiere:

The work is wonderful because it seems to lift one into some unknown region of musical thought and feeling … one is never sure whether one is listening to something very old or very new. The voices of the old church musicians are around one, and yet their music is enriched with all that modern art has done, since Debussy, too, is somewhere in the picture. It cannot be assigned to a time or a school, but it is full of visions.

Composed especially for Gloucester Cathedral, the Tallis Fantasia calls for two string orchestras of unequal power (about forty players in orchestra one, nine players in orchestra two), and a solo string quartet consisting of the principals of the first (larger) orchestra. Vaughan Williams also indicates that orchestra two (the smaller group) is to be physically separated from orchestra one and the solo quartet. The composer seems to have deployed his musical material and his musicians in such a manner as to create a spacious, grand, and (at times) remote aesthetic experience.

Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15

“I shall never write a symphony,” remarked Brahms to one of his friends. “You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him behind us.” Of course, we know “him” as Beethoven. Upon hearing Beethoven�s Ninth Symphony when he was 21, Brahms was greatly moved to begin his own great symphony, yet often met unsuccessful ends in his early years. It would not be until 1876 that Brahms completed his First Symphony in C Minor—a work started some 20 years prior.

Although the D Minor Piano Concerto was originally conceived as a sonata for two pianos, Brahms recognized that the sonata demanded symphonic proportions. Thus in the summer of 1854, he sketched his intended “symphony” in D minor only to realize that the work was drifting into the realms of a concerto. It was not until 1856 that Brahms decided to turn the work into one, redrafting the first movement and adding the adagio and rondo. The concerto was essentially completed in March of 1858. Brahms, always critical of his own work, continued to revise it until he performed the premi�re in January of 1859. To his dismay, the second performance�in Leipzig, Germany�was greeted with hisses. The composer offers these remarks regarding the Leipzig incident: “Perhaps this is the best thing that can happen. It forces one to sort out one�s ideas and builds up courage�but the hisses were too much.” Owing to Brahms� persistence and encouragement from those devoted to him, the work gradually gained acceptance. Leipzig eventually regarded them D Minor Piano Concerto as a masterwork as well.

The first movement conjures memories of Beethoven�s Ninth Symphony, from which the D minor tonality is derived. After a 90-measure orchestral introduction, the piano enters with a lament comprised of parallel thirds and sixths. The passage intensifies, culminating in a sequence of octave trills in alternation with the orchestra. As the movement continues, the distinction between “concerto” and “symphony” becomes ambiguous. The use of the piano as an accompanying instrument throughout the movement reflects Brahms� desire to create an integrated “symphony with a piano.” The movement concludes some 20 minutes later, having encompassed this symphonic quality for which Brahms was striving.

The first movement clearly derives some of its melodic material from the struggles Brahms had when his friend Robert Schumann attempted suicide in 1854. The second movement, in contrast, reflects Brahms� respect for him (if not for Schumann�s wife, Clara). At the top of the page, and without intending it to be published, Brahms inscribed in Latin, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” The movement reflects this prayerful quality and is seen by some as memorial to Schumann, who died in 1856.

A full-blown seven-part rondo completes the concerto. The captivating motive, carried by the piano alone at the beginning, appears throughout the entire movement, creating much of the melodic material. Perhaps the most striking feature of the movement is its resemblance to Beethoven�s Piano Concerto No. 3. The form, being nearly identical with the work by Beethoven, distends the traditional rondo form by inserting a fugato in the middle and adding several sections after the last complete restatement of the A theme. The movement concludes with the main motive being stated in the horns above parallel trills in the piano. These trills intensify into rapid parallel chords, which remain unrelenting until the end.

—Kyle Knoepfel

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