Brahms: Symphony No 1

Advantages: A new way to hear Beethoven
Disadvantages: Surpassed by some later period cycles

...INTRODUCTION Beethoven's nine symphonies cover one of the major cornerstones of symphonic literature along with the likes of Haydn, Brahms and Sibelius. Beethoven was born in turbulent times when the common people's dissatisfaction toward the ruling monarchs in Europe was reaching new heights which finally culminated in the French Revolution in 1789. Against this came Beethoven, who was born into a family of musicians in Bonn in 1770. His father wanted to coin in on the child prodigy market created by Mozart whose father had exploited his genius in a similar way. But Beethoven was no Mozart. He wasn't born a child progidy and his performing skills were nowhere near as natural as they were with Mozart. Still he made rapid progress as a piano virtuoso and an amateur composer. He was even supposed to take some lessons with Mozart in Wien... Read review

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Advantages: Mutter's eloquence and sensitivity in older recording are enhanced here.
Disadvantages: None at all!

...-Hungarian violin prodigy to modify the piece as necessary. (Brahms himself did not play the violin). Joaquim did so, and the piece finally premiered on January 1, 1879--to a confused and rather hostile reception (not unlike what would later greet the Tchaikovsky violin concerto). Pianist Hans von Bulow described it as a concerto not ‘for the violin’, but ‘against it’! Brahms tweaked it further until the piece finally saw publication months after its premiere. With such shaky beginnings, it might have been hard to imagine the work becoming one of the most beloved in the violin repertoire today. To be quite frank, the concerto did almost nothing for me at first. None of the musical themes appealed to me, buried as they were in the work’s complexity. It was hard to follow the melodic line, which was obscured by frequent shifts in rhythm and tempo... Read review

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Advantages: A most powerful and unique work in the annals of music
Disadvantages: Will not appeal to the cutesy-cutesy people

...symphonies, the Sixth is also the most classical in terms of form. All the other symphonies (of past and future) contained much more unconventionalities than the Sixth. The First was originally a tone poem turned symphony; no.2 was also more like a very large orchestral and choral symphonic poem; no.3 extended to seven whole movements with a massive choir and soloists to perform roughly five minutes of its 1½-hour length; no.4 featured a solo soprano; no.5 had five movements with progressive tonalities as did no.7 with its two slow movements; no.8 featured unpresedented orchestrations with two full orchestras, three choirs, two children's choirs, soloists, thus earning the name "Symphony of a Thousand"; and no.9 again employed progressive tonalities Mahler so liked to use. No.6 on the other hand features all the traits of the accepted form... Read review

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