Symphony N° 2 in D major and 3 in F major

Abstract

Brahms struggled with the First Symphony for sixteen years, but the Second Symphony was completed within a few months during the summer of 1877 in the Carinthian town of Portschach/Worthersee. Observers immediately over-estimated the significance ol the surroundings, deeming Brahms's Second Symphony his 'Pastorale'. A different set ting would have also been conductive to the work, for Brahms, who earned his living as conductor of the Vienna Gesellschaftskonzerte, valued the vacation as an opportunity to devote himself to his actual calling. None of the measures depicts pastoral moods, tempests or such things. However many measures seem to exude an idyllic feeling. The first movement, Allegro non Troppo, begins with the three-note motif D-C sharp-D m other words, tonic, leading note, tonic, played by the basses. This constitutes the thematic basis, the motivic germ, of the entire work. Brahms, the inventive craftsman, based a four-movement symphony on a fundamental interval. The small interval is conducive to that lyricism for which the Second Symphony immediately became noted. It has a sweeping adagio movement which grows out <>l .in expressive melody played by the cellos and is dramatized by passionate developmental passages. The third movement is a dance with a dignified character and the brevity of an intermezzo. Its Trio is a presto in 2/4 meter. The last movement is more a fiery finale than the scene of pent-up complexities as in the first Symphony. The Third Symphony was first performed in Vienna in 1883, the year it wa$ composed, under the direction ol Hans Richter, a confidant of Wagner. The design ol the Third Symphony is clear: two passionate allegro movements surround a lyrical, meditative Andante and a Romance of chamber music character. The alternation between major and minor - inherited from Schubert becomes the main force behind the work; its unifying element. The major mode of the conclusion seems as unusual in the first movement as it does in the Finale; it is no longer an expression of prevailing strength, but instead takes on the mellow softness of resignation. The days of the bright closing stretti are over. The C major Andante is also a sonata-allegro, but with an abridged recapitu. lation. For Clara Schumann it was an idyl 'with which one feels completely enveloped in all of the bliss of nature'. There are no contrasts of tempo and dynamics in this dolce movement. The sound relies for the most part on the gentle tone color of the woodwinds and French horns. The third movement is a Romance in 3/8 meter in which the heroic, tragic key of C minor takes an elegiac turn. The Finale expands rhapsodically. The forces which unfolded in the first movement appear to regroup here, unlcasing powerful developmental passages and coming to rest in a sweeping Coda.