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Johannes Brahms Symphony No. 3 in F Major, Op. 90 Houston Symphony Orchestra / Leopold Stokowski, Conductor 1 I. Allegro con brio 10:16 2 II. Andante 10:52 3 III. Poco allegretto 06:22 4 IV. Allegro 09:42 BRAHMS: Symphony No. 3 in Brahms and Ignaz Brüll. One of those pre- There is a close connection between the F Major, Op. 90 sent at this private run-through was a man musical content of the Third Symphony and who was not ranked among the composer’s the circumstances of its second performance. Leopold Stokowski conducting the many admirers. Consequently, when Ehrbar Some thirty years earlier, Brahms met the Houston Symphony Orchestra reported to Brahms that the man had waxed Hungarian violinist, Joseph Joachim, and enthusiastic in his comments about the Third the two became fast friends. The two young Symphony, he retorted brusquely, “Have you men formed a sort of two-member club that Brahms was forty-three before he completed told him that he often lies when he opens his included practically everything but a secret his First Symphony, the composition which mouth?” handshake. Joachim, who was two years had occupied him, off and on, for more than older than Brahms, had already established fourteen years. The Second Symphony fol- The symphony had its first performance on himself in the musical world, and he was lowed only a year later, but there was a lapse December 2, 1883, at a concert of the Vienna able to give his colleague some valuable of six years between the Second and the Philharmonic Orchestra, Hans Richter con- advice concerning publishers and the busi- Third, which was not ready until 1883. ducting. As usual, Brahms was quite con- ness of giving concerts, in return for which cerned about how the public would receive Brahms taught him to smoke. When their The composer had not been idle in the mean- his new work. He expressed some dissat- activities kept them apart, the two musicians time; between these two symphonies he isfaction over the way the rehearsals had corresponded under romantic pseudonyms wrote his two famous overtures - the Tragic gone, yet the manuscript copy of the score and sent each other counterpoint exercises and Academic Festival - the celebrated Violin shows that he also took some cues from these for correction. Concerto and the Second Piano Concerto. rehearsals and penciled in numerous cor- These works enhanced his reputation rections and revisions. The concert offered Joachim had adopted a motto consist- immensely, and aroused tremendous inter- a double premiere; in addition to the sym- ing of the notes F-A-E; they stood for “Frei est in the new Third Symphony. phony, Dvorˇák’s Violin Concerto was heard aber einsam” (Free but lonely”). Not to be for the first time, with Franz Ondricek as the outdone, Brahms took a motto of his own, Brahms began work on the Third Symphony soloist. changing Joachim’s E to an F, so that his in 1882. As was his custom, he spent the read “Frei aber froh” (“Free but happy”). summer of 1883 away from Vienna. That Though Wagner had died that year, the According to a count made by Robert Haven year, the place he chose for his retreat was a fierce Wagner-Brahms feud had not sub- Schauffler, this F-A-F motto appears in no house in Wiesbaden, where he occupied the sided in the least. Some of the more fanati- less than eleven of Brahms’ compositions. second floor. In her biography of the com- cal members of the Wagner cult attended Chief among these is, the Third Symphony, poser, Florence May relates how he used to the premiere of Brahms’ Third Symphony, where the motto has been altered to F-A flat- remove his boots when he returned home and tried to ruin the performance by hissing F. In that form it appears at the very opening every evening and walk upstairs in his stock- loudly between movements. But the enthu- of the symphony and at quite a few points in ing feet, in order not to disturb a sick old siastic ovation accorded the new work was the first movement, returning again at the woman who lived on the first floor. It was in more than sufficient to drown out the hisses. symphony’s close. Wiesbaden that Brahms completed the sym- The conflict, however, almost precipitated a phony. duel between one Brahmsian, Arthur Faber, About two years before the appearance of the and a Wagnerite who was sitting behind him. symphony, Brahms and Joachim had become The new composition was first tried out, as Happily, the affair was forgotten at a post- estranged because Brahms had sided with its two predecessors had been, at the Vienna concert party which Faber gave for Brahms, Joachim’s wife in a domestic dispute. Some home of Ehrbar, the piano manufacturer, Dvorˇák and a number of other musical dig- authorities believe that Brahms gave consid- the reduction for two pianos being played by nitaries. erable prominence to this motto as a means of communicating to his old friend in music note of the F-A flat-F motto, with which the what he could not say in words. The recon- work opens. In the transition from the pow- ciliation was effected when Joachim wrote erful first subject to the quieter second one to Brahms asking if he might be permitted there occurs a brief sighing passage. Several to conduct the symphony for the first time in commentators have called attention to the Berlin. The composer had already promised similarity between this passage and the this honor to Franz Wüllner, who released chorus for women’s voices at the end of the him from the commitment, and Joachim Venusberg scene in Wagner’s Tannhäuser. presented the new work on January 4, 1884. 1883, the year the Third Symphony was completed, was also the year of Wagner’s Two weeks later, Brahms came to Berlin death, and some believe that this may have and conducted the symphony him- been a quiet gesture of memorial tribute self with Wüllner’s orchestra, the Berlin from Brahms to his fiercest, musica1 adver- Philharmonic. He also appeared as soloist in sary. The second movement is an even-tem- his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor. The late pered, almost hymn-like Andante. In place of Philip Hale recounted in his program notes the customary scherzo, there is a Poco alle- for the Boston Symphony Orchestra that he gretto that is a songful, if somewhat melan- attended that performance. “The symphony choly, intermezzo. The finalAllegro begins in was applauded enthusiastically,” he wrote, a mood of veiled mystery, but soon emerges “but Brahms was almost as incompetent a from the clouds into a stronger, more affirm- conductor as Joachim.” Hale also recalled ative heroic light. At the very dose of the that Brahms’ piano playing on that occasion movement, the symphonic cycle is rounded was “muddy and noisy.” out with a subdued restatement of the motto and opening theme from the first movement. When Hans von Bülow introduced the Third Symphony at Meiningen, he played it twice Notes by PAUL AFFELDER on the same program, in order that the audi- ence might become better acquainted with it. According to all reports, the applause was louder after the second performance. The Third Symphony is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, con- tra-bassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, kettledrums and strings. The two end movements of the symphony have a heroic character. As a matter of fact, both Richter arid the critic Eduard Hanslick referred to this as Brahms’ Eroica. The prin- cipal theme of the first movement, Allegro con brio, grows immediately out of the last Some notes on the history of Everest Notice that now EVEREST engineers have tensile strength which effectively eliminates of EVEREST 35 mm equipment, EVEREST Records over 3 times the normal space available pitch changes due to “tape stretch”, a condi- engineers are able to make recordings and [than] on ¼” tape. 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