Classical Music | Violin Music

Recorded on 07/18/2013, uploaded on 01/06/2014

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Johannes Brahms is well-known for his extreme self-criticism. Several of his works underwent long periods of gestation. Most famously, his First Symphony was in the works for twenty years before reaching its final form, premiere and publication. For Brahms (who on one occasion admitted to Henschel, “I never cool down over a work, once begun, until it’s perfected, unassailable”), it was not merely self-criticism but a keen sense of the past, of responsibility to the masters before him, and knowing that his works would be judged by that standard. Like the symphony, Brahms’s sense of history was even more present in his mind with the composition of string quartets, a genre likewise built by the hands of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

Brahms’s String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, and its predecessor and companion in C minor, appeared in 1873, three years before his First Symphony, when the composer was forty years old. However, he had already been long at work in the genre. His first attempts appeared in the 1850s, coinciding with his first symphonic attempt. Brahms even stated on occasion that he had worked out and destroyed twenty sketches before completing his first quartet. Whether this is true or mere hyperbole on Brahms’s part remains an open question, yet it gives a sense of the tremendous standard Brahms held himself to.

Though both of the opus 51 quartets were completed alongside each other, the Second Quartet is certainly a different kind of work than its predecessor, and it looks rather forward to the serenity of Brahms’s late chamber music than the Sturm und Drang of his earlier years. In the key of A minor, it abounds in lyricism, but is tinged with the melancholy of a resigned sadness. While it also shares the same degrees of motivic development as its companion piece, the Second Quartet comes about it in a different way, and its wealth of ideas suggest the influence of Schubert rather than Beethoven. The Allegro non troppo first movement is a finely crafted sonata form. Its outer sections (exposition and recapitulation) are particularly lengthy, greatly expanded by the wealth of ideas Brahms is able to draw out of the work’s basic motif. Consequently, the development section per se is rather brief. Next, the second movement is a darkly hued Andante despite its A major tonality. A Hungarian-inspired second theme in the relative minor, foreshadowing the work’s own finale, provides a point of contrast before the main theme returns in the key of F major. The Quasi Minuetto third movement opens in ghostly shadows with an A minor theme, given in harmony by the violins and viola, atop drone fifths in the cello. No Trio section appears in the movement, but the Minuet-like theme is instead alternated with a distant Allegretto variation. Lastly, the Finale takes its cue from the preceding movement, developing its material into a sprightly Hungarian dance.       Joseph DuBose

The Steans Music Institute is the Ravinia Festival's professional studies program for young musicians.