The adagio... gets me every time... Brahms once wrote, "Composing is easy... the hard part in knowing what notes to not write." Yet he made it sound so easy. Amazing how such emotion could be put on paper.
Brahms did not find composing easy. He worked on his Symphonies for years before completing them. He threw away many quartets beofre deciding on the ones that were good enough to publish.
I really like the Serenade No. 2 also. They are both really beautiful and Pastoral. It's always autumn with Brahms though. His music reminds you of nature in a lot of places, but it is always autumn, never summer (always a little bit melancholy).
I love Brahms, I remember reading somewhere critics in Brahms time said his music - nothing happens, perhaps like some people they did not appreciate his music, when nothing is happening everything is happening just listen to the beauty, variation and development, it's beautiful and fulfilling.
People of the time often seem to not understand composers seemingly ahead of their time. I myself have trouble understanding modern stuff even in the 1900s and more so contemporary music. It was bordering on inane but now it is.
Dan Brahms was long considered a stodgy, colourless, reactionary composer back in his day. Amazingly that view of Brahms persist to this very day. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth, as all his key works abound with stylistic innovation and invention. Schoenberg was most aware of this, and published a treatise called "Brahms the Progressive".
secretofsuzanne Brahms is one of my favorite composers; his music always emphasizes melody and expressiveness even through dense orchestral textures. And whoever said Brahms "lacks invention" (I think both Hugo Wolf and Tchaikovsky) had rocks in their head! Invention is present in all on Brahms' published works, and like Beethoven and Mozart before him, Brahms sounded the note of the sublime
thank you Timothy for your kind reply, I had almost forgotten my remarks because I believe it is more than three years I commented. like you Brahms is a favorite of mine, i used to play back to back the same symphony by two orchestras for comparison. thanks again.
That means it was not me! I thought I was the only one to not get Brahms at first. I would even get upset about people praising Brahms' pieces I couldn't listen to without getting bored. Now I love his works.
Francisco Sunderland. Well, it's a gorgeous piece but if it's in your top ten list, all I can say is that you haven't listened to enough music. My heavens, there's so much great Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Verdi, Mahler, etc., etc.. Keep listening and then revise your list.
Encore une belle découverte! Je ne connaissais pas Brahms avant de tomber, par hasard, dans une bouquinerie, sur le Brahms de Claude Rostand. J'écoute, une à une, les oeuvres décrites dans le livre, tout en avançant dans la vie du compositeur. Beaucoup de plaisir!
Oh yes, this is Brahms. I can't believe that someone can take the same work and then perform in such a manner as to make it thoroughly unrecognizable...Thank You!....
Try to imagine hearing the majestic third movement in 1857. Of course, Brahms himself wasn't sure that he was ready for people to hear it. There was even better stuff yet to come!
These period accurate performances are absolutely amazing! I'm more of a baroque/classical listener myself, but listening to Brahms and other romantic and forward composers being played on period instruments is so fresh and unique! Thank you for this awesome recording!
Who says the are playing on period instruments? They sound modern to me. Fools look for a piano made in in 1830 to play Schumann while he and his wife delighted in buying new improved pianos. I detest period insturments and never buy Cds of Bach's keyboard works unless they are played on a piano that can render their contents as Barenboim does -also Brendel.
@@felixdevilliers1 Well, besides having studied and worked for many years now as both a modern and historically informed musician and therefore being able to distinguish a period orchestra from a modern one, there's also the video description? With very little research you'd find out that the performers (Capella Augustina) are a period ensemble/orchestra. A shame you have to resort to insults and call people "fools" for their listening or performing preferences. I'm just glad that historically informed performances of any period of music are gaining more and more popularity, even among established "modern" musicians such as Sir Andras Schiff, who I had the pleasure of playing with as he performed the Brahms concertos on a Bluthner. Must be frustrating for you seeing so many period instrument recordings popping up. There's always good old Barenboim there for you, I guess!
@@Zordan60 - Whatever instruments they are playing on, they sound O.K. hardly different form a modern orchestra. It's just that I have had bad experiences with authentissists. Someimes they play badly on purpose.This does not apply to everyone - I have heard a friend plaing baroque music beautifully on period instruments with friends. At one point the authentissits sad you should not put any expression in to Bach, as though he were not one of the most expressive composers ever. Once an orchestra from Germany played Bach here in Verona and they were playing badly on purpose with a deliberately squeaky trumpet. I walked out after about 15 minutes. The clavichord and harpsichord are not adequate for Bach's music. Bach preferred ths clavichord to the harpsichiorf because it wa more expressive. He rightly disliked the first fortepianos which sound like honky-tonky instruments. Someone told me eanestly that you couldn't use the pedal in Mozart. Then I read that as soon as the pedal was invented, Mozart gave a special concert to illustrate its uses. In Bach's Prlelude in B flat minor, Book 1, a dscreet use of the pedal helps you to sustain harmonies otherwise sustained in an orchestra.
When I first heard this, early in my classical journey, I wondered 2 things: 1) Why was this delight so obscure and 2) Why is this symphonic gem dubbed a mere "Serenade". Comments below are helping me with item 2. But my point #1 still stands.
A smaller string ensemble playing gut strings, plus woodwinds actually made of wood, make for much warmer if less powerful timbres. More importantly, they restore the balance between strings and winds that Brahms intended.
+Martin Tousignant I've never found balances faulty on recordings which don't use period instruments, and I'm skeptical as to whether this orchestra actually sounds like what Brahms heard in his lifetime . The gut strings have that unpleasant nasal, pinched wheezing sound which has ruined so many period instrument performances for me . It's okay to use period instruments for baroque and classical period music, but this is carrying HIP to ridiculous lengths . And how do we know Brahms wouldn't have loved the sound of today's orchestras if he could come back and hear them ? We don't .
Brahms premiered his 2nd Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic, which in 1877 was nearly as large as today. However he premiered his 4th in 1885 with the Meiningen court orchestra, which had about half the string players we expect today. Fewer strings restore the balance between the strings, winds, and brass. I readily accept modern instruments if they maintain this balance.
Brahms and conductor Hans von Bulow both declined to augment the Meiningen strings even though they undertook a 14-city tour featuring the then-new symphony.
Interesting discussion. I had a recording by Otto Klemperer of the Siegfried Idyll in its chamber scoring, as premiered on a Christmas morning chez Wagner for Cosima's birthday, and I still haven't heard a version I like better. In general, I'll enjoy any performance that sheds new light on a piece. But there are times when Historically Informed becomes Historically Shackled. The reductio ad absurdum was a set of the 5 Beethoven concertos which used a different old piano for each. They all sounded shitty.
Oh lord...now this sounds like Brahms should sound; by this I mean that, I was listening to another conductor with this same work, and something told me that this can't be Brahms; that in fact it wasn't, at least in the interpretation, for I was beginning to think that I had a work by the master that sounded mediocre, but oh no...not Brahms. Thankfully, I had to give this work another listen, and I tell you, that...this is Brahms as I have come to expect it...Thank You!...
@@andrewpetersen5272 Dear friend, Indeed I do not "feel the need". This was just a simple note or two reasons; (1) this waork is a youth work, written even before his meeting with the Schumann's in Dusseldof, and anyway it is yet a high quality meeting (rememeber that Brahm"s musical deucation was all but orthodox)and (2) 'serenade' implies fenerally light music, but ib=ndeed it is not - just as Mozart's Kleine machtmusik. All in all, I agree wiyh Oerlemens.
@@andrewpetersen5272 Dear friend, I do not see my previous answer, but basically I did not "feel the need to qualify it". Brahms wrote that Serenade while he was still young, before meeting the Schumann's in Düsseldorf, a long time before setting up in Vienna. His mui sical formation was much less than orthodox, and necertheless he became the more strict composer of the whole German romantic period. As soon as in this Serenade, he showed that he was a great composer. "Obviously" mens that Brahms cannot write a Serenad with the same pen than for instance the First Piano Concerto in D minor op. 15. He has to adopt a more light style to comply with the requested style for a Serenad, but this does not mean that he was less talented than in more "serious" work. The same thing applies to Mozart's maturity works such as the famous 'Kleine Nachtmusik', a great materpiece, or the troi Dicertimento to Puchberg, Indeed a Masonic work with its two outstanding first movements and his finale which seems to prefigure Schumann. Note alo so that the 'young' Dvorak was haihly inspires in his Serenade for strings op. 22, and that Tchaïkovski moderated his exuberant romantic impetus in his own Serenade for strings. Even Schoenberg wrote a masterpiece with his Seerande for 4 strings, clarinets & bass clarinet, guitar, mandolin and a baritone singing a sonetto by Petrarco in one movement.
Hermosa composición. Debo observar, lamentablemente, que la interrupción por comerciales, hace perder la concentración en la obra. Gracias de todas formas por subir este archivo.
I am sure Mozart would have called it a serenade. Trust Brahms! This IS a serenade -- not a symphony or, for that matter, a symphonic poem. Whatever it is, it is authentic Brahms, with his extreme self-critical sense. No wonder he is deservedly one of the 3Bs -- meaning, of course, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms (arranged both chronologically and alphabetically).
Robert Schäfer Sowohl, als auch...Wahrscheinlich hatte Brahms selber ja gar nichts gegen Liebeskummer---"Frei aber froh"---für uns normale Sterbliche vielleicht eher "gegen"...
"Frei aber froh." Perhaps no one in history has had so inaccurate a personal motto. And yet his tears bring consolation to others. "...their works follow them."
Brahms had the same opinion. Most people do, but it doesn't make Brahms close to being a bad composer, or even a mediocre one, because he wasn't. If you think about composers as being like mountain ranges, Beethoven was one of the very tallest of all peaks, along with a few more like Bach and Mozart, but Brahms is only a bit lower. Beethoven being one of the greatest doesn't mean Brahms wasn't also great -- he just wasn't Beethoven. One doesn't make Beethoven any greater by attacking the reputation of Brahms, as both have written music for all time. I can assure you, had he heard it, Beethoven would have been highly complimentary about this music, which in so many ways uses his own music as a model. Love them both.
+SuperStuey2 Indeed! It is remarkable how, even when consciously writing in the same forms as Beethoven and orchestras of the same size, he managed to find his own and unmistakable voice
+Jack Fletcher I am going to make a guess and say this is one of the first classical music pieces you listen to. No one knowing a bit about it would make such a stupid comment and mistake Brahms' music for Beethoven's (unless he was a moron, of course).
The adagio... gets me every time...
Brahms once wrote, "Composing is easy... the hard part in knowing what notes to not write." Yet he made it sound so easy. Amazing how such emotion could be put on paper.
Brahms did not find composing easy. He worked on his Symphonies for years before completing them. He threw away many quartets beofre deciding on the ones that were good enough to publish.
Brahms: more music per note than nearly any other composer.
I really like the Serenade No. 2 also. They are both really beautiful and Pastoral. It's always autumn with Brahms though. His music reminds you of nature in a lot of places, but it is always autumn, never summer (always a little bit melancholy).
But like a warm autumn day, tending more towards summer than winter.
the landscape of the image is the city of Cava de' Tirreni, Italy, just what I see from my balcony
A perfect way to start the day.
+wcsxwcsx maybe if you wake up at evening ;)
+反-Alles I do ;)
I was just going to say that today! Go figure.
I love Brahms, I remember reading somewhere critics in Brahms time said his music - nothing happens, perhaps like some people they did not appreciate his music, when nothing is happening everything is happening just listen to the beauty, variation and development, it's beautiful and fulfilling.
People of the time often seem to not understand composers seemingly ahead of their time. I myself have trouble understanding modern stuff even in the 1900s and more so contemporary music. It was bordering on inane but now it is.
Dan Brahms was long considered a stodgy, colourless, reactionary composer back in his day. Amazingly that view of Brahms persist to this very day. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth, as all his key works abound with stylistic innovation and invention. Schoenberg was most aware of this, and published a treatise called "Brahms the Progressive".
secretofsuzanne Brahms is one of my favorite composers; his music always emphasizes melody and expressiveness even through dense orchestral textures. And whoever said Brahms "lacks invention" (I think both Hugo Wolf and Tchaikovsky) had rocks in their head! Invention is present in all on Brahms' published works, and like Beethoven and Mozart before him, Brahms sounded the note of the sublime
thank you Timothy for your kind reply, I had almost forgotten my remarks because I believe it is more than three years I commented. like you Brahms is a favorite of mine, i used to play back to back the same symphony by two orchestras for comparison. thanks again.
It may not be Brahms' best work but, how beautiful it is! I've fallen in love with Brahms' music recently, after years of not understanding it
"After years of not understanding it" - sound like you went through the same path with me! I LOVE Brahms now as well.
@@jeanparke9373 yes Brahms is wonderful!!!!
Me too.
That means it was not me! I thought I was the only one to not get Brahms at first. I would even get upset about people praising Brahms' pieces I couldn't listen to without getting bored. Now I love his works.
Among my top 10 all time compositions. Fantastic!
Francisco Sunderland. Well, it's a gorgeous piece but if it's in your top ten list, all I can say is that you haven't listened to enough music. My heavens, there's so much great Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Verdi, Mahler, etc., etc.. Keep listening and then revise your list.
The music of an enchanted world
always been among my top ten orchestral favorites - beautifully and enthusiastically performed in this recording
Che meraviglia. Brahms è così ricco di idee luminose.
Bellissimo!
Encore une belle découverte! Je ne connaissais pas Brahms avant de tomber, par hasard, dans une bouquinerie, sur le Brahms de Claude Rostand. J'écoute, une à une, les oeuvres décrites dans le livre, tout en avançant dans la vie du compositeur. Beaucoup de plaisir!
Oh yes, this is Brahms. I can't believe that someone can take the same work and then perform in such a manner as to make it thoroughly unrecognizable...Thank You!....
Try to imagine hearing the majestic third movement in 1857. Of course, Brahms himself wasn't sure that he was ready for people to hear it. There was even better stuff yet to come!
These period accurate performances are absolutely amazing! I'm more of a baroque/classical listener myself, but listening to Brahms and other romantic and forward composers being played on period instruments is so fresh and unique!
Thank you for this awesome recording!
Who says the are playing on period instruments? They sound modern to me. Fools look for a piano made in in 1830 to play Schumann while he and his wife delighted in buying new improved pianos. I detest period insturments and never buy Cds of Bach's keyboard works unless they are played on a piano that can render their contents as Barenboim does -also Brendel.
@@felixdevilliers1 Well, besides having studied and worked for many years now as both a modern and historically informed musician and therefore being able to distinguish a period orchestra from a modern one, there's also the video description? With very little research you'd find out that the performers (Capella Augustina) are a period ensemble/orchestra.
A shame you have to resort to insults and call people "fools" for their listening or performing preferences. I'm just glad that historically informed performances of any period of music are gaining more and more popularity, even among established "modern" musicians such as Sir Andras Schiff, who I had the pleasure of playing with as he performed the Brahms concertos on a Bluthner.
Must be frustrating for you seeing so many period instrument recordings popping up. There's always good old Barenboim there for you, I guess!
@@Zordan60 - Whatever instruments they are playing on, they sound O.K. hardly different form a modern orchestra. It's just that I have had bad experiences with authentissists. Someimes they play badly on purpose.This does not apply to everyone - I have heard a friend plaing baroque music beautifully on period instruments with friends. At one point the authentissits sad you should not put any expression in to Bach, as though he were not one of the most expressive composers ever. Once an orchestra from Germany played Bach here in Verona and they were playing badly on purpose with a deliberately squeaky trumpet. I walked out after about 15 minutes. The clavichord and harpsichord are not adequate for Bach's music. Bach preferred ths clavichord to the harpsichiorf because it wa more expressive. He rightly disliked the first fortepianos which sound like honky-tonky instruments. Someone told me eanestly that you couldn't use the pedal in Mozart. Then I read that as soon as the pedal was invented, Mozart gave a special concert to illustrate its uses. In Bach's Prlelude in B flat minor, Book 1, a dscreet use of the pedal helps you to sustain harmonies otherwise sustained in an orchestra.
Splendid rendition for which many thanks to all involved in bringing this to the general public
A chamberistic soul in a orchestral body
It's a pleasure for the soul,... enjoying this work!
I just heard it on radio 3, I had no idea what it was, I guessed someone imitating brahms
How beautiful!! Great music to work to, it's so inspiring. Thank you for uploading it!
Beautiful ! Thank you for posting :)
Beautiful, viola passages.
When I first heard this, early in my classical journey, I wondered 2 things: 1) Why was this delight so obscure and 2) Why is this symphonic gem dubbed a mere "Serenade". Comments below are helping me with item 2. But my point #1 still stands.
A smaller string ensemble playing gut strings, plus woodwinds actually made of wood, make for much warmer if less powerful timbres. More importantly, they restore the balance between strings and winds that Brahms intended.
+Martin Tousignant I've never found balances faulty on recordings which don't use period instruments, and I'm skeptical as to whether this orchestra actually sounds like what Brahms heard in his lifetime . The gut strings have that unpleasant nasal, pinched wheezing sound which has ruined so many period instrument performances for me . It's okay to use period instruments for baroque and classical period music, but this is carrying HIP to ridiculous lengths . And how do we know Brahms wouldn't have loved the sound of today's orchestras if he could come back and hear them ? We don't .
Brahms premiered his 2nd Symphony with the Vienna Philharmonic, which in 1877 was nearly as large as today. However he premiered his 4th in 1885 with the Meiningen court orchestra, which had about half the string players we expect today. Fewer strings restore the balance between the strings, winds, and brass. I readily accept modern instruments if they maintain this balance.
Brahms and conductor Hans von Bulow both declined to augment the Meiningen strings even though they undertook a 14-city tour featuring the then-new symphony.
Interesting discussion. I had a recording by Otto Klemperer of the Siegfried Idyll in its chamber scoring, as premiered on a Christmas morning chez Wagner for Cosima's birthday, and I still haven't heard a version I like better. In general, I'll enjoy any performance that sheds new light on a piece. But there are times when Historically Informed becomes Historically Shackled. The reductio ad absurdum was a set of the 5 Beethoven concertos which used a different old piano for each. They all sounded shitty.
I know! It sounds so colorful.
37:15 sounds very identical to the scherzo of Beethoven’s second symphony
Gotta love the french horn.
Ravishing.
Oh lord...now this sounds like Brahms should sound; by this I mean that, I was listening to another conductor with this same work, and something told me that this can't be Brahms; that in fact it wasn't, at least in the interpretation, for I was beginning to think that I had a work by the master that sounded mediocre, but oh no...not Brahms. Thankfully, I had to give this work another listen, and I tell you, that...this is Brahms as I have come to expect it...Thank You!...
Sounds like a symphony.
Of course, this is a "light" Brahms, but it is very well written and always of good flavour.
I don't think the Adagio is light. I already feel a bit of the flavour of the second movement in the 4th symphony......
Of course? You feel the need to qualify it for some reason?
@@andrewpetersen5272 Dear friend, Indeed I do not "feel the need". This was just a simple note or two reasons; (1) this waork is a youth work, written even before his meeting with the Schumann's in Dusseldof, and anyway it is yet a high quality meeting (rememeber that Brahm"s musical deucation was all but orthodox)and (2) 'serenade' implies fenerally light music, but ib=ndeed it is not - just as Mozart's Kleine machtmusik. All in all, I agree wiyh Oerlemens.
@@andrewpetersen5272 Dear friend, I do not see my previous answer, but basically I did not "feel the need to qualify it". Brahms wrote that Serenade while he was still young, before meeting the Schumann's in Düsseldorf, a long time before setting up in Vienna. His mui sical formation was much less than orthodox, and necertheless he became the more strict composer of the whole German romantic period. As soon as in this Serenade, he showed that he was a great composer. "Obviously" mens that Brahms cannot write a Serenad with the same pen than for instance the First Piano Concerto in D minor op. 15. He has to adopt a more light style to comply with the requested style for a Serenad, but this does not mean that he was less talented than in more "serious" work. The same thing applies to Mozart's maturity works such as the famous 'Kleine Nachtmusik', a great materpiece, or the troi Dicertimento to Puchberg, Indeed a Masonic work with its two outstanding first movements and his finale which seems to prefigure Schumann. Note alo so that the 'young' Dvorak was haihly inspires in his Serenade for strings op. 22, and that Tchaïkovski moderated his exuberant romantic impetus in his own Serenade for strings. Even Schoenberg wrote a masterpiece with his Seerande for 4 strings, clarinets & bass clarinet, guitar, mandolin and a baritone singing a sonetto by Petrarco in one movement.
@@gerardbegni2806 Very good. Thanks for the clarification.
Hermosa composición. Debo observar, lamentablemente, que la interrupción por comerciales, hace perder la concentración en la obra. Gracias de todas formas por subir este archivo.
Verdad! Pero PÁGUE los 100 pesos....y resulta Ni Una Comerciale.....Saludos desde San Agustinillo!
Sempre lo stesso capolavoro.
Very good interpretation.
Thanks for uploading!
What cover art piece are you using here?
Brahms Orkesterserenaden sind beide feste Schönebürge Kammersimfonien
(Chamber Symphonis)브람스 관현악세레나데~견고하고 아름다운 실내교향곡들!!
I am sure Mozart would have called it a serenade. Trust Brahms! This IS a serenade -- not a symphony or, for that matter, a symphonic poem. Whatever it is, it is authentic Brahms, with his extreme self-critical sense. No wonder he is deservedly one of the 3Bs -- meaning, of course, Bach, Beethoven and Brahms (arranged both chronologically and alphabetically).
and in order of quality
mein ganz besonderer musikalischer Anker zum Überwinden von großem Liebeskummer. Eigenartig, oder?
Wieso eigenartig? Brahms ist immer gut für Liebeskummer!
gut für - oder gut gegen ... Liebeskummer??
Jedenfalls geht seine Musik ans Eingemachte, so denn man sich dafür öffnet.
Robert Schäfer Sowohl, als auch...Wahrscheinlich hatte Brahms selber ja gar nichts gegen Liebeskummer---"Frei aber froh"---für uns normale Sterbliche vielleicht eher "gegen"...
"Frei aber froh." Perhaps no one in history has had so inaccurate a personal motto. And yet his tears bring consolation to others. "...their works follow them."
WJohnM Why inaccurate? Happiness could be reached trough sadness and tears...
Prefer the Bernard Haitink with the Amsterdam Concertgebeow the best rendition for this beautiful work.
Menuetto I
Cammac Anyone?
in my humble opinion, Beethoven is the far superior composer, but each is entitled to his own choice.
Brahms had the same opinion. Most people do, but it doesn't make Brahms close to being a bad composer, or even a mediocre one, because he wasn't. If you think about composers as being like mountain ranges, Beethoven was one of the very tallest of all peaks, along with a few more like Bach and Mozart, but Brahms is only a bit lower.
Beethoven being one of the greatest doesn't mean Brahms wasn't also great -- he just wasn't Beethoven. One doesn't make Beethoven any greater by attacking the reputation of Brahms, as both have written music for all time. I can assure you, had he heard it, Beethoven would have been highly complimentary about this music, which in so many ways uses his own music as a model. Love them both.
@@Galantski You are of course quite correct and have made a valid point.
@@jackfletcher1000 ,they all worship at the altar of js bach. But the three B's. Not a bad world!
Superior how?
In my subjective world, all composers are superior. I am a grateful listener.
@@andrewpetersen5272 You are quite correct. I should have said that I much prefer Beethoven, but do love a lot of Brahms music.
Like so much of Brahms work, ripped of from better composers notably Beethoven
I think not.
+SuperStuey2 Indeed! It is remarkable how, even when consciously writing in the same forms as Beethoven and orchestras of the same size, he managed to find his own and unmistakable voice
+Jack Fletcher I am going to make a guess and say this is one of the first classical music pieces you listen to. No one knowing a bit about it would make such a stupid comment and mistake Brahms' music for Beethoven's (unless he was a moron, of course).
Cant say I've ever heard it
Jack Fletcher
Bullshit. It's nothing like Beethoven. It's pure Brahms. Keep listening and you'll hear the difference.