Brahms
Concerto in D Major for Violin & Orchestra, Op. 77
Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1833 and died in Vienna in 1897. He composed his Violin Concerto in 1878, and he led the first performance with Joseph Joachim, violin, and the Gevandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig the following year. The score calls for solo violin, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings.
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Brahms was not a violinist. Like many composers before and since, he had an abstract idea of what he wanted the violin to do in his concerto, but felt compelled to ask a virtuoso performer for advice. For Brahms, that virtuoso was Joseph Joachim.


Brahms and Joachim had been friends since they were in their early twenties. At the time, Joachim was already a famous master of the violin and an accomplished composer and conductor as well. Brahms, on the other hand, was yet a budding young composer with little confidence in his own abilities. He soon began to show Joachim his scores-in-progress, and he took the violinist’s comments very seriously. Joachim eventually became a great champion of Brahms’ music and a loyal partisan in the Brahms-Wagner Wars, which were a conflict between the Brahms approach of music for music’s sake and Wagner’s strong belief in programmatic music. So it was natural, some 25 years into their friendship, that Brahms would ask Joachim for advice about his Violin Concerto.


“After having written it out, I really do not know what you will make of the solo part alone,” Brahms wrote. “It was my intention, of course, that you should correct it, not sparing the quality of the composition, and that if you thought it not worth scoring that you should say so. I shall be satisfied if you mark those parts which are difficult, awkward, or impossible to play.” Joachim replied: “It gives me great pleasure to know that you are composing a violin concerto! I have had a good look at what you sent me and have made a few notes and alterations, but without the full score I cannot say much. I can make out most of it, however, and there is a lot of really good violin music in it.”


This give-and-take continued even past the first performance and up to the point of publication. Brahms ignored some of Joachim’s suggestions for simplifying the violin part but he took his friend’s comments about the music itself to heart, and there are more than a few of Joachim’s ideas in this concerto.


As usual for Brahms, the reactions to the first performances were mixed. Conductor Hans von Bülow famously remarked that while Bruch had written a great concerto for the violin, Brahms had written his against it. Referring to the second movement, the great violinist Pablo de Sarasate declared, “I don’t deny that it is very good music, but do you think I could fall so low as to stand, violin in hand, and listen to the oboe play the only proper tune in the work?” Yet at this remove it is clear that Brahms’ Violin Concerto has become a monument, at equal station with Beethoven’s. Its first movement is hugely majestic, its second both subtle and ravishing, and the Finale’s Gypsy like music shows Brahms giving the soloist an invitation to dance.