Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73

Program notes

About the Work

If Brahms’s First Symphony had cost him more than two decades of struggle (haunted by the shadow of Beethoven, it was famously not completed until 1876), his Second came almost as a release. He wrote it in the summer of 1877, with extraordinary speed, during a holiday at Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a lakeside village in southern Austria whose Alpine beauty he adored. ‘So many melodies fly about here,’ he wrote to a friend, ‘that one must be careful not to tread on them.’ Where the First had been a hard-won victory, the Second seemed to flow from the landscape itself, and it has been loved ever since as Brahms’s sunniest, most genial symphony, the one most often, and not unjustly, called his ‘pastoral.’

The comparison to Beethoven’s ‘Pastoral’ Symphony is apt in spirit if not in detail. Brahms wrote no birdsong or babbling brook, no programme of country scenes; his is an abstract symphony in the great Classical tradition. But the warmth of the key of D major, the lilting dance rhythms, the long-breathed song of its melodies, and the unhurried ease of its outer movements all conjure an atmosphere of open air, light, and contentment. The premiere, given by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter on 30 December 1877, was a triumph; the third movement had to be encored, and the symphony was at once recognised as a more immediately appealing work than its formidable predecessor.

Yet to hear the Second as merely sunny is to miss its depth, and Brahms knew it. With his characteristic dry humour, he warned his publisher that the new symphony was ‘so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it,’ and instructed that the score be printed ‘with a black border.’ The joke conceals a truth. From its very first bars, a darker undertow runs beneath the music’s smiling surface. The opening combines a gentle, rocking figure in the cellos and basses with a soft, ominous motto in the timpani and trombones, and those trombones, instruments Brahms reserved for moments of weight and solemnity, cast a shadow across the otherwise serene landscape. This interplay of light and shade, of pastoral ease shot through with sudden gravity, gives the symphony its peculiar richness. The contentment is real, but it is the contentment of a mature artist who knows what lies beneath.

The symphony is laid out in four movements. The expansive first movement (Allegro non troppo) unfolds with the spaciousness of a summer afternoon, growing from its rocking opening into broad, lyrical paragraphs, including, as its second theme, a melody clearly cousin to the beloved ‘Brahms’s Lullaby.’ The slow movement (Adagio non troppo) is the symphony’s most searching, a grave and complex meditation that is the closest the work comes to genuine melancholy. The third movement replaces the expected scherzo with a graceful, intermezzo-like Allegretto, built on a charming oboe tune and twice interrupted by faster, playful episodes; it was this movement the first audience demanded to hear again. The finale (Allegro con spirito) begins almost in a whisper, gathering its energies stealthily before bursting into exuberant motion, and drives toward one of the most thrilling conclusions Brahms ever wrote: a blazing coda in which the trombones, so shadowy at the symphony’s start, ring out in radiant, jubilant D major, transforming the music’s early darkness into pure light.

The Second Symphony has remained, with good reason, among the best-loved of all Brahms’s works. It offers the listener the rare combination of immediate warmth and lasting substance: music that charms on first hearing and deepens on every return.

What to Listen For

From the opening, listen for the three-note figure low in the cellos and basses, a small, rocking motif that Brahms will turn into the seed of the entire first movement. Almost at once, notice the soft, dark intrusion of the timpani roll and the low trombones beneath the gentle horn melody: this is the ‘black border’ Brahms joked about, a shadow slipping across an otherwise sunlit scene. Listen, too, for the second main theme, a warm, swaying tune in the cellos and violas; many listeners recognise in it the contours of Brahms’s famous Lullaby. The whole movement breathes with an unhurried, expansive ease; let it stretch out rather than waiting for drama, and savour the long-spanned melodies and the gentle, dancing triple-time pulse beneath them.

In the slow movement (Adagio), shift your attention to weight and seriousness. This is the symphony’s gravest music: a noble, song-like theme launched by the cellos that develops in long, complex lines. The texture is dense and the harmony restless; this is Brahms at his most inward and searching, and it provides the necessary counterweight to the warmth around it. Don’t expect easy tunes here; follow instead the rich, conversational unfolding of the strings and winds.

The third movement is the easiest to love, and was encored at the premiere. Listen for the graceful, slightly wistful oboe melody that opens it, supported by gently plucked cellos, a relaxed, almost rustic dance. Then notice how Brahms twice quickens the pace into faster, scampering episodes (in duple and triple time) before the oboe tune returns, each time subtly transformed. It is a movement of charm and wit, light on its feet throughout.

Save your full attention for the finale. It begins, surprisingly, almost in secret: a hushed, hurrying theme murmured low in the strings, holding its energy in reserve. Then comes the release: the orchestra erupts into bright, surging motion, and from here the music drives forward with mounting exhilaration. Track the build toward the coda, and listen for the trombones, the very instruments that cast the symphony’s opening shadow. Here, at the close, they blaze out triumphantly, crowning the work with a brilliant, joyous fanfare in D major. The shadow of the beginning is answered, and dispelled, in a final burst of light.