Performed by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Giordano Bellincampi
Giordano Bellincampi conducts the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra Photo: ©Adrian Malloch
Desperate as he was to compose symphonies that could step from the long shadow cast by Beethoven, it took Brahms 20 years to complete his first. His third then was a positive sprint. In the summer of 1883, Brahms rented a studio in Wiesbaden with a view of the Rhine and took just four months to write the piece whole.
The premiere was in Vienna that year with Hans Richter conducting. A review by Eduard Hanslick (a friend of the composer's it must be noted) pronounced the symphony "a feast for the music lover and musician". Even vocal opposition in the hall from a claque of Wagner-Brucknerites didn't take the gloss off the evening.
Clara Schumann, the former object of his infatuation and now a close confidant, wrote to him of the two-piano version of the work:
"...my heart is so full. I have spent such happy hours with your wonderful creation... What a work! What a poem!... All the movements seem to be of one piece, one beat of the heart, each one a jewel! I could not tell you which movement I loved most. In the first I was charmed straight away by the gleams of dawning day. The second is a pure idyll. The third movement is a pearl, but it is a grey one dipped in a tear of woe. How gloriously the last movement follows with its passionate upward surge! But one’s beating heart is soon calmed down again for the final transfiguration which begins with such beauty in the development motif that words fail me!"
Programme note: Kevin Keys
Recorded by RNZ Concert, Auckland Town Hall, 8 July 2021
Engineer: Adrian Hollay; Producer: Tim Dodd
