Brahms and Tchaikovsky

Played in an interesting concert last night - the first half was two sets of variations.  First the Brahms' "Haydn" variations and then the air and variations from Tchaikovsky's suite no 3.  (Contrabassoon in the first and tambourine in the section - I wonder if that was a first for these two pieces?)

Brahms is, as my friends and colleagues know, a complete blind spot for me.  It is always interesting to play Brahms, and he has an instinctive feel for exactly where to add the contrabassoon, so I never object to playing his music, but I still find almost no connection with it whatsoever.   Whereas the older I get the more I find to admire and enjoy in the music of Tchaikovsky.  When I was a  music student expressing enthusiasm for Tchaikovsky (certainly the popular pieces) was still see as a bit suspect but I am glad to say that these days people are more open minded.    

Tchaikovsky met Brahms at least one and they got on well - even if they did seem to spend most of their time together drinking.  He described him (not to his face I hope) as a "pot bellied boozer" and a "ruddy short man with a large paunch" but there seems to have been  a good personal connection between the two of them.   But Tchaikovsky clearly couldn't make any sense of Brahms' music.  Notoriously he wrote the following in his diary: 

What an ungifted s[wine]! It angers me that this conceited mediocrity is regarded as a genius. Why, in comparison with him Raff is a giant, not to mention Rubinstein, who, when all is said and done, still is an outstanding and living human being. Whereas that Brahms is just some chaotic and utterly empty wasteland 

(There are other translations of the word Swine, mostly even less polite!)

That is probably just letting off steam. But I recently came across a much more interesting comment by Tchaikovsky in which he explains what he thinks as he does.  It is worth quoting this in full:



In the music of this master (for his mastery can of course not be denied) there is something dry and cold which repels my heart. He has very little melodic inventiveness; his musical thoughts are never spoken out to their conclusion; no sooner has one heard a suggestion of a melodic form that can be easily appreciated, than the latter has already sunk into a whirlpool of meaningless harmonic progressions and modulations. It's just as if this composer had deliberately set himself the task of being unintelligible; what he does is precisely to tease and irritate one's musical feeling. He does not wish to satisfy the latter's needs, he is afraid to speak in a language that reaches the heart. His depth isn't real — elle est voulue [French: 'it is assumed, artificial'] — he seems to have decided once and for all that it is necessary to be profound, and it is true that he has a semblance of depth, but only a semblance. His profundity is empty. One can't say that Brahms's music is feeble and insignificant. His style is always elevated; he never chases after outward effects, he is never banal; everything in him is serious and noble, but the most important thing is missing — beauty. It is impossible not to respect Brahms; one cannot fail to bow before the chaste purity of his aspirations; one cannot but marvel at his steadfastness and proud refusal to make the least concession to triumphant Wagnerism, but it is difficult to like him. In my case at any rate, no matter how much I've tried, I simply haven't been able to. By the way, I should, though, make the following reservation: namely, that some of Brahms's works from his early period (for example, his string sextet in B♭ major) do appeal to me infinitely more than his later ones, especially the symphonies, which seem to me incredibly boring and colourless.




That chimes almost exactly with my own feelings about Brahms (even to the extent of being positive about the B flat String Sextet) .  In particular the comment about music thoughts never being spoken out to their conclusion seems to be to me spot on.  Time after time in Brahms one hears an appealing melodic idea only for it to just peter out rather than reach a satisfying conclusion.  The opening of the 4th symphony is a case in point for me, but this happens often in the Haydn variations we played last night - the 6/8 variation no 7 is a typical example.   There is the start here of a beautiful melody but it goes nowhere.

One of my tutors at university was a very distinguished Brahms scholar and I had plenty of opportunities to share his insights.  I remember him very clearly saying that he thought that there was not a single piece of Brahms in 6/8 that was not also, at least in part, in 3/4.  I am sure that that it is true: he saw it as a convincing sign of his genius.  I am afraid that I see it as a chronic inability to stick to something simple and straightforward and instead always wanting to muddy the waters with complexity!


What then of Tchaikovsky.  I know all of the criticisms that can be made.  The air and variations we played last night is probably not the best of Tchaikovsky, and it had some moments of banality.  But who cares.  What it has is personality!   It leaps off the page at you and draws you along irresistibly.   That is not so say that it is simplistic: far from it.  There is some extremely complex music in some of the variations and it does not give up all of its secrets on first hearing.   But ultimately I feel that Tchaikovsky is writing music which it to meant to be heard.  I do feel that all too often Brahms is writing for himself and is not really bothered whether anybody else is listening.

Perhaps one day I will undergo a conversation and will read these words with horror - but I've know the music of Brahms for most of my life and have played all of the major pieces, some several times, without changing my mind.

So I am with Tchaikovsky.  In fact I am prepared to risk what musical credibility I still have by saying that I would gladly swap the Brahms' entire output for Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and feel that I had come off best!