For first-time listeners, Johannes Brahms’ Symphony No. 4 in E minor can be shocking and expectation-shattering.
Composed in 1884, Brahms’ final symphony does not take the journey from darkness to light (a minor key to a major key) charted by so many Romantic symphonies, beginning with Beethoven’s Fifth. Negating the heroic transformation of his First Symphony, Brahms leaves us with a stark, tragic resolution in E minor. He concludes the Symphony with a mighty passacaglia, a Baroque form featuring variations above a repeating bass line, seldom found in symphonic music.
Brahms’ Fourth develops from a single strand of musical DNA—a chain of falling and rising thirds, played by the violins in the opening of the first movement. Infused with quiet melancholy, this haunting melody sets in motion a continuous stream of unfolding lines, a kind of organic growth that composer Arnold Schoenberg called “developing variation.” The unrelenting power of these organic lines stunned listeners when Brahms played the score on the piano for a group of close friends. The critic Eduard Hanslick, who turned pages for that initial performance said, “For this whole movement I had the feeling that I was being given a beating by two incredibly intelligent people.” He later described the work as resembling “a dark well; the longer we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back.”
The exposition section of the first movement (Allegro non troppo) concludes with spirited fanfares. The opening motif returns, falsely suggesting the typical repeat of the exposition section, but we are soon swept into the development section. One striking passage features a dreamy musical conversation between strings and winds. The music tiptoes back home to the recapitulation with the opening theme slowed down and accompanied by ghostly ascending lines. Brahms returned to the movement’s fragmented opening motif in his final work, Vier ernste Gesänge (Four Serious Songs), Op. 121, accompanying the words, “O death! O death!”
Introduced by two horns, the first theme of the second movement (Andante moderato) is modal, set in a wistful E Phrygian. Commentator Karl Geiringer described it as “the shadow of an inevitable fate.” Here again, the most seemingly insignificant musical line is ripe for development. At the movement’s climax, the horn theme is tossed around the orchestra in an ever-intensifying contrapuntal conversation. In contrast is the majestic, hymn-like second theme. Near the end of the movement, perhaps the clarinets intone a ghostly remembrance of the second movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony (24:39).
The third movement (Allegro giocoso) is an exuberant scherzo in 2/4 time, punctuated with the shimmering addition of the triangle in the percussion section.
From joyful C major, the Symphony is pulled back to tragic E minor in the opening bars of the final movement (Allegro energico e passionato), beginning with an ominous wind choir. Thirty variations unfold over the passacaglia bass line, derived from the closing movement of Bach’s cantata, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150. In tender, contemplative moments, the music veers into the major, only to be brutally cut off by the return of E minor. Hammer blows fall, and the three trombones emerge as voices of the supernatural. The ferocious final cadence delivers a tragic “farewell.”
This performance, recorded in Hamburg in May of 2007, features Christoph von Dohnányi and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra:
Five Great Recordings
- Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98, Christoph von Dohnányi, Cleveland Orchestra Warner Classics
- Carlos Kleiber and the Vienna Philharmonic
- Eugen Jochum and the London Philharmonic Orchestra
- Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic
- James Levine and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra