Brahms Fifth Symphony (?)

[Cato]

No, unfortunately, this is not about an unknown Brahms manuscript found in some unbombed attic in Vienna.

In fact it is hard to find anyone unbombed, or at least uncaffeinated, in Vienna!   

But a kind of Fifth Symphony, by Arnold Schoenberg of the Brahms G minor Piano Quartet, has been around for a long time.

Schoenberg felt compelled to orchestrate it, since he felt the opus was unsuccessful as a chamber work.

Questions: Which performances of the Schoenberg orchestration do you recommend?

Is there another Brahms chamber piece which could be orchestrated as a "Fifth Symphony" ?

Is there a work by another composer which could be deemed a "Brahms Fifth" the way Brahms' First was deemed a "Beethoven Tenth" ?

For the latter question, with some reservations, I offer the Hans Rott Symphony in E for your consideration.

[ChamberNut]

Perhaps:

Piano Trio no. 3 in C minor
Piano Quartet No. 3 C minor "Werther"
Piano Quintet in F minor

[Cato]

Perhaps:

Piano Trio no. 3 in C minor
Piano Quartet No. 3 C minor "Werther"
Piano Quintet in F minor

One of the quibbles about Schoenberg's claim is that the Piano Quartet in G minor predates the First Symphony by more than a decade.

So the Piano Quartet #3 might calm the quibblers!

[Lethevich]

I was amazed at how hard such a simple question was to answer. I even consulted composer lists, but couldn't find any serious candidate. There are a few different types of related-symphonists:

The post-Brahms Romantics, all lesser composers, none of whom composed anything to approach his own (Dohnányi, Gernsheim, Stanford).

The late Romantics who were highly appreciative of Brahms, but who didn't sound particularly like him (Elgar).

20th century composers who channeled Brahms in very strange, personal ways (Rubbra, RVW's 4th reminds me of Brahms' severity of form, despite its Beethoven model).

After much searching, I could only conclude that the only symphony that is truly on the level of Brahms was written during his lifetime - Dvořák's 7th. It certainly doesn't work as natural follow up to the 4th, but it is the only work which has quality enough not to look silly when put forward for comparison...

[Superhorn]

   I don't agree with Lethe about the Dvorak 7th being the only symphony of that time which measures up to the Brahms 4th.
  What about Bruckner, whose symphonies I consider even greater than those of Brahms, as much as I love them ?  Or the last three of Tchaikovsky? Yes, I know, snooty academic musicologists sneer at them because they aren't structurally"correct", but they work and are valid on their own terms.
  The Dvorak 8th and New World are also truly great.
  I don't know about any other symphonies being a Brahms 5th ,though,even if some may show some influence of Brahms.

[Lethevich]

   I don't agree with Lethe about the Dvorak 7th being the only symphony of that time which measures up to the Brahms 4th.
  What about Bruckner, whose symphonies I consider even greater than those of Brahms, as much as I love them ?  Or the last three of Tchaikovsky? Yes, I know, snooty academic musicologists sneer at them because they aren't structurally"correct", but they work and are valid on their own terms.
  The Dvorak 8th and New World are also truly great.
  I don't know about any other symphonies being a Brahms 5th ,though,even if some may show some influence of Brahms.

Sorry, my phrasing was poor. I meant the most overtly 'Brahmsian' symphony which could compare to the master's own work. The others ploughed their fields in more individual ways.

[ChamberNut]

   I don't agree with Lethe about the Dvorak 7th being the only symphony of that time which measures up to the Brahms 4th.
  What about Bruckner, whose symphonies I consider even greater than those of Brahms, as much as I love them ?  Or the last three of Tchaikovsky? Yes, I know, snooty academic musicologists sneer at them because they aren't structurally"correct", but they work and are valid on their own terms.
  The Dvorak 8th and New World are also truly great.
  I don't know about any other symphonies being a Brahms 5th ,though,even if some may show some influence of Brahms.

I definitely would not say Bruckner or Tchaikovsky.  Their styles were very different from Brahms, IMO.

Perhaps early Richard Strauss is the only one whose "style" somewhat resembles Brahms.

[Mark G. Simon]

Sorry, my phrasing was poor. I meant the most overtly 'Brahmsian' symphony which could compare to the master's own work. The others ploughed their fields in more individual ways.

I understand what you meant. Yes, you can almost hear Dvorak thinking to himself "WWBD?" (What would Brahms do?) in the 7th.

[Brian]

For what it's worth, Brahms was working on a Fifth Symphony, but a couple string-instrument-playing friends reminded him that he had promised them concertos, so he decided to kill all of the birds with one stone and converted the symphony's early sketches into the Double Concerto.

After much searching, I could only conclude that the only symphony that is truly on the level of Brahms was written during his lifetime - Dvořák's 7th. It certainly doesn't work as natural follow up to the 4th, but it is the only work which has quality enough not to look silly when put forward for comparison...

I actually disagree with Mr. Simon and others: for all the much-offered comparison of Dvořák's symphonic works to Brahms', I don't think the Seventh is too terribly Brahmsian. For one thing, it is not much of a "follow-up" to the Fourth, since they were written at roughly the same time (Dvořák started his work a few months after Brahms started his, but finished it and oversaw its premiere before Brahms had completed work on the Fourth). I get that Mr. D. was trying to write something dramatic - I think he used a phrase like "shaking up the world" - but he does it very much in his own personal way. The slow movement is maybe closest to Brahms - but there's too much weird, wacky chromaticism in the first, the scherzo is very very Czech, and the finale - well I've always disagreed with most other folks on the finale. Apparently it's supposed to be a happy ending. To me it sounds like a mad rush to the apocalypse.

Granted, the Brahms 4 and Dvořák 7 are close relatives in terms of mood and the way that the very first "sentence" tells you, without preamble, that you are listening to an extraordinary tragedy. I think they would make an excellent coupling on compact disc. But part of what makes them so interesting is how differently they approach the basic problem. Nobody else could have written that Dvořák piece - the explosions of great melodies, the harmonic spice, the great rhythmic complexities, and in the finale especially some really daring orchestration.

If anything there is a structural similarity with Beethoven's Fifth, in which, like the Dv7, the first movement has an isolated pocket of melodic material that's unrelated to the rest of the movement which only appears once during the rest of the work: transfigured and in a new shape, in the final movement's coda, where it again seems out of place.

So in short, I don't think Dvořák's Seventh is very Brahmsian at all, but that's only a listener's view.

[Lethevich]

There are certainly key differences - the long-lines of the scherzo in the 7th in particular are pure Dvořák. Also, despite the frequent comparisons between the two works, the 7th doesn't seem to be based on the 4th, as it was actually completed possibly a little before, and also performed before. It was however apparently very strongly based on the 3rd, but I could also understand there being Beethoven's 5th as a reference too, if Dvořák was in full reverence mode (he seems to have some Beethovenian qualities in his earlier symphonies, after all...). I've never thought of comparing it to Beethoven's 5th, so thanks for the pointer - it should be interesting to compare them when I get a chance.

[Brian]

There are certainly key differences - the long-lines of the scherzo in the 7th in particular are pure Dvořák. Also, despite the frequent comparisons between the two works, the 7th doesn't seem to be based on the 4th, as it was actually completed possibly a little before, and also performed before. It was however apparently very strongly based on the 3rd, but I could also understand there being Beethoven's 5th as a reference too, if Dvořák was in full reverence mode (he seems to have some Beethovenian qualities in his earlier symphonies, after all...). I've never thought of comparing it to Beethoven's 5th, so thanks for the pointer - it should be interesting to compare them when I get a chance.

Another interesting comparison you may want to make comes from a musicology paper I got to read recently: that Dvořák's Eighth Symphony may have been a sort of disguised "rebuttal" of the Tchaikovsky Fifth! Now that was a fascinating read. 

But again, I don't think he was in full reverence mode with No. 7 ... I think he was totally himself. 

[Cato]

Other candidates for Brahms Fifth would be the Alexander Zemlinsky Symphony #1 in D minor or (more likely) #2 in Bb.

http://www.amazon.com/Zemlinsky-Symphony-No-Minor-flat/dp/B000CNEO0M

Beware!  Some recordings out there do not have the 4th movement of #1: the James Conlon/EMI recording is recommended.

Zemlinsky of course - besides inventing his own voice - is not immune to the Wagnerian and Brucknerian microbes floating in the Viennese atmosphere, as well as th Brahmsian ones.

[Mark G. Simon]

Harold Schonberg also thought Dvorak's 7th sounds like Brahms, and he criticized it on that basis:

Many critics, especiall the British ones (Dvorak and the British had a long association; the British were looking for somebody after Mendelssohn to admire, and they came up with Dvorak), seem to think that because the Seventh Symphony is Brahmsian and the most classically constructed of his works, it has to be the best. The academic mind is always with us. As a matter of fact, the Seventh Symphony up to the third movement is nothing but a facade, despite some lovely moments. Not until the third movement does Dvorak forget about Brahms and symphonic form, and then he composes the most delightful individual movement of any of his symphonies. Here the classic formalities are off, and Dvorak breathes once more, singing forth one of those Bohemian-sounding melodies to which countermelodies cling in the most natural and unaffected polyphony. The D minor symphony on the whole is nowhere near as good as the Eighth Symphony in G major, or even the early no. 3 in E flat major.

[Mark G. Simon]

I'll tell you where the most telling Brahmsian fingerprint is in the Dvorak 7th. Listen to the 2nd statement of the opening theme, when it gets stated fortissimo. In the fifth bar of this statement the harmony shifts from D minor to a B flat minor chord in first inversion (i.e. D flat in the bass). It's that chord that has Brahms written all over it.

[jlaurson]

A tad repetitive (I like to call it "parody", not self-plagiarism), but it should get the point across. 

http://www.weta.org/fmblog/?p=177

There is an anecdote of Bruno Walter premiering the Schoenberg orchestration of the Brahms Quartet for Piano and Strings no 1 in G minor, Op. 25 in California where one of the 'Dragon-Ladies' of the Board came up to him afterwards and proclaimed: "I don't know what everyone's problem is with that Schoenberg. I think that was quite beautiful." It is safe to say that she did not gain much insight into Schoenberg's (actual) work, but at least she enjoyed his orchestration, which indeed – insight or not – any Brahms-lover will.

It was Walter who had suggested to Schoenberg to arrange and orchestrate that quartet – and it was Walter who coined the term "Brahms' Fifth Symphony" for the result. It is, despite Schoenberg's insistence that he only 'opened up the inherent possibilities' of works of past masters (certainly not true with a piece like the Monn Cello Concerto, though), a musical work of its own. And not just for the last movement's instrumentation which really revels in surges of Hungarian color that Brahms would never have come up with.

This monumental and stunningly beautiful work is good to have in any performance. I've never heard it played quite as beautifully as on Christoph Eschenbach's RCA recording with the Houston Symphony (coupled with Schoenberg's excellent Bach transcriptions of BWV 552, BWV 654, and BWV 631) but the recording is sadly out of print. The finest sounding version currently available is probably Neeme Järvi's on Chandos.

Another fine account has recently been offered by Robert Craft on Naxos – coupled with the aforementioned cello concerto, which is more based on, rather than "transcribed from", Georg Matthias Monn's (1717 - 1750) work. It's a rare, albeit minor, gem and alternatively available with Yo-Yo Ma on Sony under Ozawa. It's like a C.P.E. Bach-ish concerto twice removed, romanticized, and re-assembled. Significantly altered, it makes for a wholly new, oddly familiar, even disorienting work – but with its creator's idiom still "pleasantly" intact.

Tacked onto that disc are Schoenberg's "Five Pieces for Orchestra" which is great if you want to get into the 'difficult' (that is: real) Schoenberg on the strength of one disc. Still, it might be more attractive to get Robert Craft's early Columbia recording only of Schoenberg transcriptions reissued by RCA.

http://ionarts.blogspot.com/2007/04/dip-your-ears-no-77.html

I've never heard the Brahms Piano Quartet in Schoenberg's orchestration played quite as beautifully as on Christoph Eschenbach's RCA recording with the Houston Symphony (sadly out of print – coupled with Schoenberg's Bach transcriptions of BWV 552, BWV 654, and BWV 631). But this monumental work, nicknamed "Brahm's Fifth Symphony", is good to have on a budget disc in any performance. (The finest sounding currently available version is probably Neeme Järvi's Chandos recording.) The Piano Quartet, Schoenberg thought, was too piano-heavy and he went about creating this phenomenally effective orchestration. If you like Brahms and big-boned romantic music, you will love this. If you absolutely want to avoid the "Five Pieces" (don't!), you can also look for Robert Craft's early Columbia recording of only Schoenberg-transcriptions recently reissued by Sony/BMG/RCA.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2009/Feb09/Brahms-Schoenberg_7773562.htm

Indeed, this monumental and stunningly beautiful work is good to have in any performance. A fine account has recently been offered by Robert Craft on Naxos — coupled with the re-working of the Monn cello concerto, which is more based on, rather than "transcribed from", Georg Matthias Monn's (1717 - 1750) work. The latest addition comes from CPO, Daniel Raiskin, and the State Orchestra Rhenish Philharmonic (Koblenz). It's a lighter, not to say lyrical, performance, but neither as secure nor unashamedly bombastic as Christoph Eschenbach's recording with the Houston Symphony (coupled with Schoenberg's excellent Bach transcriptions of BWV 552, BWV 654, and BWV 631) on RCA (sadly oop).
The finest sounding version currently available is probably Neeme Järvi's on Chandos, because the London Symphony Orchestra delivers more of a punch and more vibrant colors than the Rhenish Philharmonic.

[Brian]

Many critics, especiall the British ones (Dvorak and the British had a long association; the British were looking for somebody after Mendelssohn to admire, and they came up with Dvorak), seem to think that because the Seventh Symphony is Brahmsian and the most classically constructed of his works, it has to be the best. The academic mind is always with us. As a matter of fact, the Seventh Symphony up to the third movement is nothing but a facade, despite some lovely moments. Not until the third movement does Dvorak forget about Brahms and symphonic form, and then he composes the most delightful individual movement of any of his symphonies. Here the classic formalities are off, and Dvorak breathes once more, singing forth one of those Bohemian-sounding melodies to which countermelodies cling in the most natural and unaffected polyphony. The D minor symphony on the whole is nowhere near as good as the Eighth Symphony in G major, or even the early no. 3 in E flat major.

Very interesting commentary, one I shall chew on as I listen (which I am currently doing). Interesting that he omits mention of the finale.

I also happen to hold the view that the Symphony No. 2 in B is distinctly Dvorakian and his most overtly Bohemian symphony until No. 8, a view on which nobody else seems hold!

[Mark G. Simon]

Dvorak had too much of a musical personality to loose himself entirely to Brahms, even in the "Brahmsian" 7th. I like the 7th quite a lot, and think Schonberg's judgment of it is a tad too harsh.

[nut-job]

No one could write "Brahms 5th" any more than Brahms could write Beethoven's 10th.

The transcription of the Piano Quartet by Schoenberg is attractive (I have a nice recording by Dohnanyi with Vienna) but Brahms knew what he was doing, the original is superior, in my view.  Schoenberg may have had a point about the quartet not being ideal in concert performance, chamber music is mean't to be heard in an intimate setting.  However, I assume that at this point 99% of the time this music is heard in a recording.  In this context the original shines more brightly than Schoenberg's reworking.

[Jo498]

There have been several other orchestrations of Brahms' chamber pieces, e.g. of the b major trio and of the second string quintet! So lots of options to choose from for "Brahms' 5th"...

[asin]B006LYJEDI[/asin] [asin]B01MXSDPAT[/asin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWvuIwuH8xw

[listener]

Vancouver will hear the Brahms-Schönberg "live" Feb.24     (Elgar Cello Concerto also on the program)
http://www.vancouversymphony.ca/concert/17MUS03/