Brahms: Symphony No. 2 | Daniel Harding & the Verbier Festival Orchestra

Brahms' Symphony No. 2 remains an enigma to this day: is it a cheerful or a rather melancholy work? The scintillating interpretability of Brahms' Second Symphony has earned it a deserved place in the canon of Romantic symphonies. This recording features the young and talented musicians of the Verbier Festival Orchestra under the baton of Daniel Harding at the Verbier Festival in 2010.

(00:00) Applause at the beginning
(00:26) I. Allegro non troppo
(15:32) II. Adagio non troppo
(25:06) III. Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino)
(30:24) IV. Allegro con spirito

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73 is the most popular of Johannes Brahms' (1833 - 1897) four symphonies. Since its premiere in Vienna on December 30, 1877, it has enjoyed great popularity among musicians and audiences alike. Brahms composed Symphony No. 2 in the summer of 1877 during a stay at Lake Wörthersee in Carinthia, Austria. He then traveled to Baden Baden, where he met up with Clara Schumann (1819 - 1896). He played her the first movement of the new symphony - and she described it as “elegiac”.

Researchers have frequently looked into whether there is a connection between Brahms' 2nd Symphony and Clara Schumann. Brahms had met the Schumanns more than 20 years before the Second Symphony was composed. Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856) considered the young Brahms to be somebody with a “calling” and helped make the North German composer widely known. Brahms, for his part, fell in love with Robert's wife Clara. While Robert was in a sanatorium, Brahms lived at the Schumann house, ran the household for Clara and acted as a father to the seven children she had with Robert. After Robert Schumann's death, the unequal partnership between Brahms and Clara Schumann came to an end. However, the two remained friends throughout their lives. There has always been speculation about the nature of their relationship.

The second theme in the first movement of the Symphony in D major may indicate that Brahms had Clara Schumann in mind when he composed it. The theme is a variation on the lullaby that Brahms had written years earlier for one of Clara's children: the “Wiegenlied” (02:42). It is therefore possible that Brahms transformed memories of Clara, his beloved pianist and composer, into orchestral music. This would offer some explanation for the peculiar mixture of cheerfulness and sweetness on the one hand and melancholy on the other that Brahms' second symphony radiates. Seen in this light, the symphony would contain biographical elements and be a living memorial to the woman he loved all his life but who remained unattainable.
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