Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77

Program notes

About the Work

Brahms composed his only violin concerto in 1878, in the glow of a productive summer at Pörtschach on the Wörthersee, the Carinthian lakeside resort where he spent his summers from 1877 to 1879. He wrote it for one man above all: the violinist Joseph Joachim, the closest musical friend of his life. The two had met in 1853, when Brahms was an unknown twenty-year-old and Joachim already a celebrated virtuoso; it was Joachim who sent the young composer to Schumann with a letter of introduction, setting his whole career in motion. A quarter-century later, Brahms repaid that debt with a concerto written expressly for Joachim’s art, and written, crucially, with his help. Brahms knew the piano intimately but was no string player, and he sent Joachim the solo part for advice on its technical detail, accepting some suggestions and stubbornly rejecting others. The collaboration was not always smooth (Joachim found passages awkward, and not all his fixes survived Brahms’s editorial obstinacy), but the result is one of the supreme concertos in the literature.

It is also a famously difficult one, though not in the showy manner of a Paganini display piece. Brahms conceived the concerto as a symphonic work with a solo violin woven into its fabric, rather than a vehicle for the soloist to dominate. The orchestra is a full partner; the violin must spin out melodies, weave through dense textures, and battle to be heard against rich orchestral writing, all while negotiating double-stops and stretches that lie ungratefully under the hand. The quip that Brahms had written a concerto not for the violin but against it, attributed both to the conductor Hans von Bülow and to the violinist Joseph Hellmesberger, is a barb that captures the work’s uncompromising integration of soloist and ensemble. The great virtuoso Pablo de Sarasate reportedly declined to play it, objecting that he would not stand on the rostrum, violin in hand, listening to the oboe play the only tune in the Adagio.

That jibe points to one of the concerto’s most beloved features. The premiere was given on 1 January 1879 at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, with Joachim as soloist and Brahms conducting, and although the early reception was respectful rather than rapturous, the concerto steadily took its place beside Beethoven’s as one of the two great German violin concertos, works so often paired that they are sometimes called the twin pillars of the repertoire. Both are in D major, both treat the violin as a symphonic voice rather than a circus act, and both reward depth of musicianship over mere brilliance. Joachim provided the cadenza for the first movement that most violinists still play, and his shaping of the solo part remains audible in every performance.

Brahms originally planned the concerto in four movements, with two central movements between the outer ones, but discarded them and substituted what he called a ‘feeble Adagio’, a characteristically gruff dismissal of music that is in fact serenely beautiful. The finished work is in the standard three movements, scored for the same warm, dark-hued orchestra Brahms favoured, and it balances grandeur, lyric tenderness, and, in its finale, an irrepressible folk-flavoured exuberance.

What to Listen For

The first movement (Allegro non troppo) is broad and symphonic, opening with a long orchestral exposition before the soloist enters, and when the violin does arrive, it is not with a pretty tune but with a stormy, declamatory flourish, as if seizing the argument by force. Listen to how Brahms treats the solo line throughout as a partner in a symphonic discussion rather than a star above an accompaniment: the violin spins long lyrical paragraphs, then plunges into dense passagework that interweaves with the orchestra. The movement’s emotional range is wide, from sweeping grandeur to moments of intimate songfulness, and it builds to a cadenza (traditionally Joachim’s) where the soloist alone reflects on the movement’s themes before the orchestra returns for the close.

The second movement (Adagio) is the concerto’s lyrical heart, and its most famous stroke is that the great opening melody is given not to the violin but to a solo oboe, singing a serene, hymn-like tune over gentle winds. This is the very passage Sarasate refused to stand idle through. When the soloist finally enters, it does not simply repeat the oboe’s theme but elaborates and embroiders it, decorating the melody with tender filigree and rising to passages of rapt, almost vocal expression. Listen for the dialogue between violin and woodwinds, a conversation of unusual intimacy and warmth.

The finale (Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace) bursts in with a swaggering, Hungarian-flavoured main theme, a nod to Joachim’s Hungarian birth and to the gypsy idiom both men loved. It is a rondo, the bold, dancing refrain returning between contrasting episodes, full of off-beat accents, fiery double-stops, and rhythmic drive. Listen for the music’s earthy, foot-stamping energy and its sudden flashes of brilliance, and for the closing pages, where Brahms transforms the theme into a brisk, march-like coda that drives the concerto to a high-spirited, triumphant finish.