Brahms Programme Notes for the Philharmonia Orchestra

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 15:20:51 -0500

I have recently written programme notes for a series of Brahms concerts given by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Lorin Maazel, at London’s Royal Festival Hall in June 2008. You can read them by visiting the Philharmonia’s website: here are the specific links.

Symphony no. 1 and Symphony no. 2 (Wednesday, 25 June 2008, 7.30pm)
Symphony no. 3 and Symphony no. 4 (Saturday 28 June 2008, 3.00pm)
Variations on a Theme by Joseph Haydn and Ein deutsches Requiem (Saturday 28 June 2008, 7.30pm)

Reforming Johannes: Brahms, Kreisler Junior and the Piano Trio in B, op. 8

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:00:02 -0600

A comparison of the 1854 and 1891 versions of the Piano Trio in B, op. 8, explores how musical allusion can be interpreted to convey Johannes Brahms’s attitudes to critics, friends, other composers and hisown past. The young Brahms’s attachment to E. T. A. Hoffmann’s literary alter ego Johannes Kreisler helps explain the extent to which the music of others makes itself heard in the first version of the trio. Changing standards of criticism affected the nature and scope of Brahms’s revision, which expunged perceived allusions; the older Brahms’s more detached compositional approach shared elements with Heinrich Schenker’s analytical perspective. There are also parallels between Brahms’s excisions and the surgical innovations of his friend and musical ally Theodor Billroth. Both Brahms and Billroth were engaged with the removal of foreign bodies in order to preserve organic integrity, but traces of others – and of the past – persist throughout the revised trio. Published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association 132/2 (2007), 252-305.

Click to download (pdf)

Is there only Juan Brahms?

Mon, 1 May 2006 14:49:19 -0500

Review-article covering books on Brahms by Daniel Beller-McKenna, Michael Musgrave & Bernard D. Sherman, and Peter H. Smith, published in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association 131/1 (2006), 160-75.

Click to download (pdf)