Brahms: Symphonies

Yannick Nézet-Séguin was 12 when he fell in love with Brahms while singing in Ein deutsches Requiem (A German Requiem), he tells Apple Music Classical. He began exploring other works by Brahms, and discovered a composer who probed the deepest human emotions through exquisitely structured music that paid homage to the great German traditions of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven. “Brahms’ music is the ideal representation of the balance between heart and mind,” says Nézet-Séguin, “and I feel now I’m getting experienced enough, and also maybe just maturing as an artist and as a person, to get closer to that balance. “People are sometimes so in admiration of the beauty of the music’s form that it becomes a little cold and detached,” Nézet-Séguin adds, “but in my case, when I started to conduct Brahms symphonies 20 years ago, I think I was too far on the opposite end of the spectrum, maybe focusing too much on the expressive side of his writing.” In his complete cycle of Brahms symphonies, recorded live in Baden-Baden with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Nézet-Séguin has decided to strike that balance by asking his musicians to imagine they were playing chamber music. “I thought it would be great to feel the same freedom playing the symphonies as when we’re playing in a quartet,” says Nézet-Séguin. The result is a set of performances that are lithe and clear, each player apparently alive to every tiny detail. Although written for full orchestra, Brahms’ symphonies all date from late on his career when he was exploring a less-is-more approach. Rather than follow the example of his contemporaries Liszt, Wagner or Berlioz, who were all expanding the possibilities of the orchestra and envisaging vast dramatic canvases, Brahms was able (and preferred) to express equally profound sentiments with smaller, more traditional forces and time-honoured compositional structures. Classical restraint meets Romantic passion. “Brahms is very, very classically orchestrated,” explains Nézet-Séguin. “Tuba only comes up in the Second Symphony, there’s a triangle only once in the Fourth, and that’s it. The trombones are used more often in the Second Symphony, but not very much in the Third. And in the Fourth, they come in just at the end, as in the First Symphony. Even the trumpet and timpani writing goes against what was being developed at the time by other composers.” When it was premiered in 1876, Brahms’ First Symphony was hailed as “Beethoven’s 10th”. Nézet-Séguin recognises the Beethoven connection, but in a different way. “Right now, I imagine Brahms’ First as another way of taking Beethoven’s path after the Fifth Symphony,” he suggests. “It’s almost as if Beethoven hadn’t written his ‘Pastoral’ Symphony and instead turned left or turned right.” With Symphony No. 2, Nézet-Séguin highlights its emotional ambiguities. Yes, there is tremendous joy in the final “Allegro con spirito”, but the first movement is more complex. “There is sunshine but never pure sunshine; usually there are some clouds in between. It’s beautiful, like nature is. And it’s never just one colour or one shade—it’s all the shades and colours at once. Symphony No. 3, says Nézet-Séguin, is Brahms’ secret garden. “The opening is so grand and fantastically heroic in its 6/4 metre, but then very quickly you get the impression you’re entering the woods or a garden where you have to discover everything underneath the flowers, underneath the leaves—underneath what’s first seen and first heard.” The Fourth, which starts intimately and grows increasingly impassioned, is a rare example of a minor-key symphony that also ends in the minor, rather than in a blaze of major-key glory, as was generally the convention in symphonies before and even after Brahms. “Audiences would have been expecting a happy ending,” says Nézet-Séguin, “but Brahms was not there for that!” The brooding final movement of Symphony No. 4 is perhaps the most Brahmsian of them all. Structured as a Baroque passacaglia, it’s a set of 30 variations on a recurring bassline, and displays both the composer’s love of form and counterpoint, and his mastery of orchestration. Within 10 minutes, Brahms conjures an astonishing range of dynamics and moods. “Brahms was maybe the most knowledgeable of all composers in terms of what came before him,” says Nézet-Séguin. “He knew Renaissance music, and was a collector of pieces by Rameau and Couperin. He knew everything by Bach, and he knew Bach’s place in history.” No doubt the atmosphere of Baden-Baden added to the electricity of these compelling performances, says Nézet-Séguin. After all, Brahms loved the idyllic southwest German town so much that he had a house there, returning summer after summer between 1865 and 1874 to relax and seek inspiration for many of his greatest works. “I talked about this a lot with the musicians,” Nézet-Séguin remembers, “and everybody took walks, visited Brahms’ house and breathed in Baden-Baden’s air. It was very special to be there, especially for that music.”