Piano concerto no. 1 in D minor opus 15
Brahms’s D minor piano concerto is his first symphonic work and the highlight of his
early output. The earliest version was composed in 1854, when Brahms was twenty-one,
as a sonata for two pianos. Brahms then thought about reworking it as a symphony and it
was only in 1855 that he decided to to turn it into a piano concerto. He eventually took
over from the early sonata and the planned symphony only the first movement (Allegro),
and composed an enrirely new slow movement (Adagio) and Rondo finale (Allegro not
troppo). He later reworked the slow movement from the early sonata and used it as the
second movement of his German Requiem.
The concerto received its first public performance in January 1859 in Hanover and
Leipzig with the composer as soloist. It was not very successful, perhaps because the
audience found the orchestral introduction unusual and the piano writing not as showy as
they were accustomed to. The concerto was published two years after its first public
performance in which time the composer made some further changes to the score,
especially in the last movement the form of which is modelled on the Rondo of
Beethoven’s C minor piano concerto.
Piano concerto no. 2 in B flat major opus 83
Brahms’s B flat piano concerto is separated by a gap of twenty-two years from his B flat
piano concerto. Brahms began work on the B flat piano concerto in 1878, completed it in
1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna and dedicated it to his teacher Eduard Marxsen.
The concerto is in four movements (Allegro non troppo, Allegro Appassionato, Andante,
and Allegretto grazioso) rather than the three movements typical of concertos in the
classical and romantic periods. The extra movement (the second movement, scherzo)
makes the concerto considerably longer than most other concertos written up to that time
as a complete performance lasts about fifty minutes. As critics noted at its first
performance, the scherzo brings the concerto closer to being a symphony for piano and
orchestra. As in his D minor piano concerto, Brahms combined elements of the classical
concerto (direct opposition of soloist and orchestra, and soloist virtuosity) with the
chamber music like influences of the baroque concerto grosso. The chamber music
tendencies are especially strong in the slow movement (Andante) which contains an
interplay of piano, cello and winds.
Despite its ambitious scale, when Brahms sent a copy of the completed score to his friend,
the surgeon and violinist Theodore Billroth (to whom Brahms dedicated his first two
string quartets), he described the concerto as ‘some little piano pieces’. On another
occasion he called the second movement a ‘tiny whisp of a scherzo’ although it is robust
music that lasts for ten minutes.
The concerto was given its public première in Budapest in 1881, with Brahms himself
playing the solo part. Unlike the D minor piano concerto which was rather coolly
received and struggled for general acceptance, the B flat concerto was an immediate and