Johannes Brahms: Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73
Brahms had barely completed work on his First Symphony when he turned his attention to the
Second. According to the composer’s own catalogue, the latter was composed in Pörtschach, the
Austrian lake-side town where he had taken up residence for the summer of 1877. Brahms’s first
task there, apparently, was to produce a piano reduction of the First, but within only a few weeks he
had completed his Second Symphony. The premiere took place on 30 December 1877 in Vienna’s
Musikvereinsaal under the baton of Hans Richter. What a contrast with the gestation of the First
Symphony, which lasted at least fourteen years!
Eduard Hanslick’s review of the premiere, like so many responses to the First, played on Beethoven
as éminence grise: ‘This work stands as unassailable proof of the fact that one … can write
symphonies after Beethoven’. However, it was the difference in tone between the two symphonies
that fascinated early reviewers, with many choosing to highlight the Second’s ‘unbuttoned’ mood.
Nonetheless, the new symphony was often taken as a sort of companion-piece to the First. It was
Schumann who labelled several of his works ‘E’ and ‘F’ to represent the personalities of his alter egos
– dreamy Eusebius and passionate Florestan – but equivalent signa could easily have been attached
to Brahms’s first two symphonies.
There are further grounds for treating the symphonies as twins. The Second Symphony’s opening
motif has a shape that can be found in the First’s finale. Chromatic lines abound in both works.
Moreover, the two symphonies make striking use of a three-upbeat figure. However, it’s probably
Beethoven rather than Schumann who provided the precedent here. In his Fifth Symphony,
Beethoven treats the three-quaver upbeat figure with violent insistence, while in his Fourth Piano
Concerto the same rhythm is presented more tenderly. Remarkably, both works grew up
symbiotically, as demonstrated by Gustav Nottebohm in his pioneering study of Beethoven’s
sketchbooks; indeed, they were premiered in the same concert. Brahms probably knew all this: he
shared a flat with Nottebohm on first settling in Vienna.
The Second Symphony has the traditional pattern of four movements. As in the First, however,
there is no scherzo; instead, Brahms includes an intermezzo-like movement in five sections. A
bucolic tone reigns in much of the outer movements, and the emotional heart of the work is, for
many, the Adagio, an intense creation that explores harmonically rich pastures.
If this is Brahms’s ‘Pastoral’, as has been claimed, it would be fitting. After all, the Beethoven
concert mentioned above contained premieres of his ‘Pastoral’, as well as the Fifth Symphony and
Fourth Piano Concerto.
© Dr Martin Ennis
Cambridge
September 2015