CHAPTER IX

1859

First public performances of the Pianoforte Concerto in Hanover, Leipzig, and Hamburg--Brahms, Joachim, and Stockhausen appear together in Hamburg--First public performance of the Serenade in D major--Ladies' Choir--Fräulein Friedchen Wagner--Compositions for women's chorus.

It is not difficult to realize something of the mingled feelings of hope and anxiety that must have filled the mind of Johannes on his arrival in Hanover in January, 1859. If the first chapter of his career had closed in triumphant fashion with the extraordinary series of events that followed his first little concert-journey, the second chapter can only be regarded as an intermezzo which was spent in quiet preparation for what was to succeed it. The prelude of his artistic life had been successfully completed in 1853; the main action was to begin with the performances in Hanover and Leipzig in the opening month of 1859. Brahms was almost extravagantly self-critical, but he must have felt encouraged when he remembered the substantial success of his début as a composer at Leipzig immediately after the appearance of Schumann's famous article, and he knew that he had now attained a much more advanced stage of capacity. Such considerations, combined with the enthusiasm of his best friends, may well have raised his hopes high.

The concerto was heard at Hanover on January 22 under the most favourable conditions. Joachim conducted the orchestra, Johannes played the solo, and it would be hard to say which of the two young musicians was the more interested in the occasion, but the result of the performance was that the public was wearied and the musicians puzzled.

'The work had no great success with the public,' reported the Hanover correspondent of the _Signale_ ten days later, 'but'--and we seem to read the promptings of a Joachim in the following words--'it aroused the decided respect and sympathy of the best musicians for the gifted artist.'

'The work, with all its serious striving, its rejection of triviality, its skilled instrumentation, seemed difficult to understand, even dry, and in parts eminently fatiguing,' said another critic;[76] 'nevertheless Brahms gave the impression of being a really sterling musician, and it was conceded without reservation that he is not merely a virtuoso, but a great artist of pianoforte-playing.'

Johannes had to leave immediately for Leipzig, and he started from Hanover without knowing more about the impression produced there by his concerto than could be gathered from the reserve of the audience and the enthusiasm of his friend, but that his frame of mind was not despondent may be inferred from a paragraph which appeared in the _Signale_ immediately after his arrival.

'Herr Johannes Brahms is here, and will play his Concerto at the Gewandhaus concert of the 27th. He thinks of remaining the rest of the winter at Leipzig.'

It is necessary to remind the reader what kind of audience it was for whose acceptance our young composer was now about to submit his work. Leipzig still occupied the position of musical capital of Europe to which it had been raised by the genius of Mendelssohn. By the most influential of its artistic circles, the premature death of this fascinating master (1809-1847) was still deplored as an almost recent event. Most of his old friends were living, and, in virtue of their former personal association with him, looked upon themselves as competent judges of all later aspirants to fame. It is matter of daily experience that the uninformed satellites of a man of genius are arrogant in proportion to their ignorance, and that even professional adepts of sincerity are apt to allow their horizon to be limited by their hero-worship. Musicians and amateurs, alike, of the Gewandhaus circle associated the idea of a concerto with the clear melody of Mozart and Beethoven, still, perhaps, regarding Beethoven as a little difficult to understand, with the attractive sparkle of Mendelssohn and with the opportunity for a display of the soloist's virtuosity afforded more or less by the works of all three masters. If asked to listen to a novelty, they expected that it should not be too unlike what they had heard before to be difficult to follow. Bernsdorf, newly appointed to succeed Brahms' friendly critic, Louis Köhler, on the staff of the conservative _Signale_, was himself a conservative of the most obstinate type, in some respects resembling the English J. W. Davison of the _Times_ and the _Musical World_, who was honestly convinced that the series of great masters had closed with Mendelssohn.

On the other hand, the New-Germans had by this time made considerable conquests in Leipzig, where they had established an important party organization, and had, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, even been admitted on trial to the platform of the Gewandhaus. The _Neue Zeitschrift_ was their organ, but they had supporters also amongst the journalists of the daily press, Ferdinand Gleich, of the _Leipziger Tagblatt_, being one of the principal. They were on the look-out for champions who would rally to their cause, and welcomed the unusual as such, though reserving their heartiest approval for the piquant, sounding, sensational, or even revolutionary.

To these two bodies of extremists our Johannes, with his inexperience, his ideal aims, his genius, and his dislike of the sensational, was now to appeal. Had he been compelled at the moment to declare for either party, he certainly would not have chosen the side of revolution. But he was gifted with an imagination at once profound, original, and romantic. This sealed his fate with the men who considered themselves the modern representatives of classic art. The day after the concert he wrote to Joachim to announce--'a brilliant and decided failure.'

'In the first place,' he says, 'it really went very well; I played much better than in Hanover, and the orchestra capitally. The first rehearsal aroused no feeling whatever, either in the musicians or hearers. No hearers came, however, to the second, and not a muscle moved on the countenance of either of the musicians. In the evening Cherubini's Elisa overture was given, and then an Ave Maria of his uninterestingly sung, so I hoped Pfund's (the drummer's) roll would come at the right time.[77] The first movement and the second were heard without a sign. At the end three hands attempted to fall slowly one upon the other, upon which a quite audible hissing from all sides forbade such demonstrations. There is nothing else to write about the event, for no one has yet said a syllable to me about the work, David excepted, who was very kind....

'This failure has made no impression at all upon me, and the slight feeling of disappointment and flatness disappeared when I heard Haydn's C minor Symphony and the Ruins of Athens. In spite of all this, the concerto will please some day when I have improved its construction, and a second shall sound different.

'I believe it is the best thing that could happen to me; it makes one pull one's thoughts together and raises one's spirit.... But the hissing was too much?...

'The faces here looked dreadfully insipid when I came from Hanover, and was accustomed to seeing yours. Monday (January 31) I am going to Hamburg. There is interesting church music here on Sunday, and in the evening Faust at Frau Frege's.'[78]

The grimness of the young composer's disappointment may be read between these Spartan lines. But perhaps he has exaggerated his failure. Let us see what Bernsdorf has to say.

'It is sad, but true; new works do not succeed in Leipzig. Again at the fourteenth Gewandhaus concert was a composition borne to the grave. This work, however, cannot give pleasure. Save its serious intention, it has nothing to offer but waste, barren dreariness truly disconsolate. Its invention is neither attractive nor agreeable.... And for more than three-quarters of an hour must one endure this rooting and rummaging, this dragging and drawing, this tearing and patching of phrases and flourishes! Not only must one take in this fermenting mass; one must also swallow a dessert of the shrillest dissonances and most unpleasant sounds. With deliberate intention, Herr Brahms has made the pianoforte part of his concerto as uninteresting as possible; it contains no effective treatment of the instrument, no new and ingenious passages, and wherever something appears which gives promise of effect, it is immediately crushed and suffocated by a thick crust of orchestral accompaniment. It must be observed, finally, that Herr Brahms' pianoforte technique does not satisfy the demands we have a right to make of a concert-player of the present day.'

Nothing could be more representative than these lines, of the conscientious bigotry which almost always opposes what is really original, though it is expressed by Bernsdorf with exceptional coarseness. The narrowly orthodox antagonists of Brahms' art resembled those who had levelled their shafts against Beethoven and Schumann each in their day. The young composer fared differently at the hands of the progressists. The _Neue Zeitschrift_ wrote:

'The appearance of Johannes Brahms with a new concerto was bound to attract our especial attention. In the first place, on account of the hopes entertained of an artist who had been introduced in a most exceptional manner, even before his first appearance, by the enthusiastic words of a revered master; and secondly, from the rarity of his subsequent public announcements and the retirement in which he has lived.

'Notwithstanding its undeniable want of outward effect, we regard the poetic contents of the concerto as an unmistakable sign of significant and original creative power; and, in face of the belittling criticisms of a certain portion of the public and press, we consider it our duty to insist on the admirable sides of the work, and to protest against the not very estimable manner in which judgment has been passed upon it.'

Ferdinand Gleich writes:

'Who would or could ignore in this new work the tokens of an eminent creative endowment! We least of all who regard it as our duty to encourage young talent. Many doubts, however, suggested themselves as we listened to this concert-piece in large form. This work again suggests a condition of indefiniteness and fermentation, a wrestling for a method of expression commensurate with the ideas of the composer, which has indeed broken through the form of tradition, but has not yet constructed another sufficiently definite and rounded to satisfy the demands of the æsthetics of art.... The first movement, especially, gives us the impression of monstrosity; this was less the case with the two others, although even there we were not able, in spite of the beauties they contain, to feel real artistic enjoyment. Brahms places the orchestra, as far as is possible in a concert-piece, by the side of the obligato instrument, and by so doing establishes himself as an artist who understands the requirements of the new era. The treatment of the orchestra shows a blooming fancy and the most vivid feeling for new and beautiful tone effects, although the composer has not yet sufficient command over his means to do justice to his intentions. The work was received calmly, not to say coldly, by the public; we, however, must acknowledge the eminent talent of the composer, of whom, though he is still too much absorbed in his _Sturm und Drang_ period, it is not difficult to predict the accomplishment of something great.'

Whether or not these two reviews were penned with a deliberate purpose--and a desire on the part of the supporters of the New-German school to identify Brahms with their cause can hardly be regarded as either remarkable or dishonourable--no trace is to be found in either of the insincerity attributed by Kalbeck, in his Life of Brahms, to the journalistic partisans of the Weimarites, and especially to Brendel, editor of the _Zeitschrift_ and friend of Liszt. Their honesty of purpose, as well as their liberality of view, has been vindicated by the fate which for many years attended the published concerto, and again we may place the remarks of Hanslick, the avowed champion of classical art and the enthusiastic admirer of the mature Brahms, beside those published in the _Zeitschrift_ of the fifties. Writing in 1888, he says:[79]

'Brahms began, like Schumann, in _Sturm und Drang_, but he was much more daring and wild, more emancipated in respect to form and modulation. The fermentation period of his genius, which is generally supposed to have closed with his Op. 10 (Ballades for pianoforte), should, perhaps, be extended ... does it not include the D minor Concerto, with its wild genius?'

It has, indeed, taken nearly half a century to establish the concerto in a secure position of public acceptance, and the day, though now probably not far distant, has not even yet arrived when it can be said to rank as a prime favourite amongst compositions of its class with the large body of music-lovers.

Conceived as part of a symphony, the first movement of the work is symphonic in character,