Light On Dark Water

I expected to like this concerto more than I had the first, which I had found, overall, somewhat difficult and hard to love–see this post. Nevertheless I felt a faint tension as I put the needle down: was I about to get a challenging full-orchestra blast, as in the first? No, not at all. I don't think I actually made any sound of relief, but I did have a distinct sense of pleasurable relaxation: here were the warm romantic horns I associate with Brahms, deep with serious, almost melancholy, feeling. This is the sort of music that people love most about Brahms. Walker Percy's protagonist The Last Gentleman, Will Barrett, broods about it, seeing its autumnal richness as beautiful but fatally wounded by the losses of modernity. (At least that's the way I remember it, but it was probably thirty or more years ago since I last read it, so I may be off.)

I'm going to love this I thought. The piano swirls comfortingly around the warm horns. But that didn't last. Within three minutes or so things begin to get stormy.

In spite of the fact that some of the greatest music ever written was written for the piano, it's not my favorite instrument. The piano music of the 19th century rarely lets one forget for very long that it's a percussion instrument, and I'm least fond of it when it gets loud and bangy. There's a good bit of that in this first movement, and a frequent alternation of piano and orchestra in which the piano seems to be needlessly aggressive. At the end of the movement I was left with a sense of tumult and confusion.

The second movement is an oddity: in place of the more typical slow movement, an even stormier, though briefer, movement began. My reaction to this can best be expressed as: What?!? I looked at the track listing on the cover of the LP: four tracks? Concertos only have three movements. Allegro appassionata? What is this even doing here? The unexpected incongruity aside, it seemed a jumble. Appassionata indeed. I simply didn't like it. 

The third movement, an Adagio that would have been expected as the second movement, seems for several minutes to be a piece for cello and orchestra. A very beautiful piece; I wasn't complaining. We are more than two minutes into it before the piano appears, sweetly and unassumingly. It remains sweet, though deeper and more rich, throughout, never getting more than mildly agitated. It would work very well alone as a concert piece, a rhapsody for cello, piano, and orchestra. Audiences would love it, as I did. It is easy to love. 

The fourth movement is well described by its instruction, Allegretto grazioso, assuming Google Translate is correct that "grazioso" means "graceful." It certainly is. Or at least I came to realize that it is. But, again, on first hearing, I didn't think very much of it: a lively but not very striking final movement.

So that first hearing was disappointing. The requisite (in my personal code) two more hearings didn't improve my reaction very much. It remained more or less in the same range as my view of the First: unenthusiastic. But I was unwilling to leave it at that. This is Brahms, I thought. It must be better than it seems at the moment. Also, my classical music consultant had told me that it's one of her very favorite piano concertos, and our tastes are generally in the same zone.

I decided to take a different approach. The concerto runs for the better part of an hour, and in spite of the fact that I'm no longer required to spend ten hours or more a day (counting travel time) at a job, I still somehow sometimes have trouble setting aside that much uninterrupted time for listening. So I started listening to the four movements separately, picking one according to whim and convenience. In this way each movement began to sink in on me and to open up, to grow on me in a way that I have long known often happens with music of any kind that doesn't immediately appeal to me. In fact those works, classical or popular, often become my favorites. That's the main reason for my three-hearings rule.

But sometimes three is not enough. I've now heard the whole concerto at least six times, and now I can say I love it. The first  movement's twists and turns began to flow and reveal great beauty in places that had seemed mere notes. The aggressive piano passages worked. The second movement was transformed. Its seeming near-anarchy became intensely affecting passion–if I had to name one movement as my favorite, this might be the one. The third only became sweeter, and the fourth is a sunny delight, not without its passing shadows.

I'm very happy to have acquired, so to speak, this work. But I'm slightly dismayed to find that I can't always trust my three-hearings method. It calls into question the use of that method in my project of getting acquainted with the great number of worthwhile classical works that I've either never heard or only heard once or twice long ago. I suppose I'll have to give the first Brahms concerto another chance now.