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"Passions are not natural to the human race; they are always exceptions, excrescences. The ideal man, strong and genuine, is calm in joy and calm in sorrow. Passions should pass quickly, or be rejected".
Thus spoke (and not content, wrote) Johannes Brahms. Not bad for a romantic artist to his core, capable like very few others of translating passions, both the most poignant and the most painful, into immortal music. The apparent schizophrenia of a statement like the one cited can only be explained by the will to clearly distance himself from those who "played" on the exaggeration and showmanship of passions, as they say. These rivals of Brahms, who liked to identify themselves in the "Music of the Future," were certainly not charlatans, but brilliant musicians such as Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner, people who would contribute (together with Brahms) to writing the history of 19th-century music. Only their attitude towards the music of the past and its codes (sonata form, counterpoint, etc.) was entirely uninhibited and revolutionary, while the "conservative romantic" Brahms preferred to concentrate all those passions which he verbally rejected in his melodic inventions, without forcing too much the structures and rules inherited from the previous century, of whose music he was an admirer (for example, Bach, almost forgotten at the time, was among his favorite authors). This controversy between "rigorists" and "avant-gardists" would then fade into nothingness at the beginning of the 20th century, with the authoritative opinions of composers like Mahler and Richard Strauss, who recognized immense merits to both "schools of thought." But in the meantime, it contributed to significantly complicating Brahms's artistic life, adding to an innate lack of confidence in his means, particularly typical of his youthful period.
His progressive overcoming coincided with a sort of physical metamorphosis, occurring around the age of 40, from which emerged the mature Brahms, heavyset and almost disguised by an enormous beard, characterizing most portraits of the artist. Shielded by this kind of armor, evidently not just external, Brahms finally faced and overcame various taboos, starting with the one that had most haunted him: the symphony. When in 1881 the monumental Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major Op. 83 was born, the symphonies already to his credit were two, and of considerable value, although the absolute masterpieces would be the subsequent two. The mastery of the most complex musical forms was now absolute, and the passions, though officially denied, fueled a fantasy at the height of its splendor, and here's the result: a Concerto so overflowing with musical ideas that it required four movements instead of the canonical three, a real marathon both for the pianist and the orchestra, but certainly not for the listener, who blissfully drinks in fifty minutes of grand music. To find proportions of this kind, one would have to turn to Rachmaninoff, incidentally another "conservative," who in the middle of the 20th century proposed typically late-Romantic music. Child of the majestic Beethoven concertos (and I'm not only referring to the famous "Emperor" but also to the unjustly lesser-known Third and Fourth) as well as the imaginative and restless masterpiece in A minor by Schumann, Brahms's Second Concerto is a fantastic example of an explosion of feelings kept (up to a point) under control, just enough not to spill over into pure "Fantasy for piano and orchestra," maintaining, albeit enormously dilated, the classical structures.
The faint and "distant" voice of a horn opens the first movement ("Allegro non troppo") with idyllic calm, but right from the piano's restless entrance you can tell that the fire of passions is working under the ashes of severity and will soon flare up in the form of impetuous outbursts that transform the horn's initial theme, now intensely dramatized and entrusted to the entire orchestra, not to mention the other themes and their precious and complex intertwinings. A rather swift closure catches us still in the act of tasting a bit here and there of the meat that has been put on the fire, which is truly abundant, but above all without the slightest sensation of heaviness despite almost 20 minutes of music. At this point, one would expect a pause for reflection, and instead, unexpected like a Beethovenian "Scherzo," comes the sublime "Allegro appassionato" that electrifies the atmosphere further, with that sudden piano attack like a lightning bolt, to which the thunder of the orchestra responds with dark and furious impetus. After such an "input," it is natural to expect subsequent scenarios if possible even more agitated and dramatic compared to the first movement, and in fact what follows does not disappoint our expectations at all. Nor does it disappoint us, the much-desired oasis of peace, which materializes in an "Andante" of rare delicacy. The great protagonist of this movement is the cello, initially almost in solitude, then with a kind of tender duet with the piano, which thickens more and more, only to gradually return to the rarefied and chamber-like tranquility of the beginning. A marvel.
Finally, with the "Allegretto grazioso" Brahms seems to want to bid us farewell with unusual cheerfulness, with a rapid succession of festive themes of a gypsy character, which seem to stem from the same world as his "Hungarian Dances." In fact, these cheerful endings are not so rare in his works: just think of the Violin Concerto or the First Piano Concerto (also beautiful, though a bit more fragmented and disorganized: it deserves a review of its own). Perhaps they are deliberately placed, as a counterbalance to the predominantly melancholic yet sublime nature of works like this one. I see this is turning into a treatise, so I'll conclude with the version of Brahms's Second Concerto to which I am most attached, which doesn't mean it's the best: Claudio Arrau with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini. Soloist and orchestra go all in, certainly not skimping neither the impetus nor the colors, and giving a truly passionate interpretation. Yes, I said "passionate," and I hope Brahms won't hold it against me.
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