Our Summer BAL 6: Brahms Serenade No 1

[Barbirollians]

The Boult is enchanting but the third movement is an Andante not an Adagio in his hands.

[jayne lee wilson]

I too find great rewards in the SCO/Mackerras. Gunter Wand's 1968 Cologne RSO one (on Profil) is lovely, on the swift and flowing side (adagio definitely non troppo), and I've great affection for the Philharmonia/D'Avalos effort on ASV.

[Pabmusic]

The Boult is enchanting but the third movement is an Andante not an Adagio in his hands.

There is a big problem in performing this wonderful piece. It's called a serenade and clearly has the lightness that goes with that, but Brahms lumbers it with a slow movement of full symphonic proportions and which is (I hate to admit it) a touch out of context. I know conductors sense this, and a quick survey of recordings shows performances varying from 11-16 minutes. Boult, at less than 9, positively races, but I suspect that was an attempt to 'tame' the movement within the context of a serenade, not a symphony. I note that Norman del Mar writes that it is very difficult to find the right speed for this over-long movement.

I think Boult's speeds work well enough (the tempo is not adagio, but adagio non troppo) because the playing is suitably light, but it has always seemed a bit breathless to me. But I'm sure that the fast speed is a reasoned one.

Personally, I prefer Kertesz.

[jayne lee wilson]

There is a big problem in performing this wonderful piece. It's called a serenade and clearly has the lightness that goes with that, but Brahms lumbers it with a slow movement of full symphonic proportions and which is (I hate to admit it) a touch out of context. I know conductors sense this, and a quick survey of recordings shows performances varying from 11-16 minutes. Boult, at less than 9, positively races, but I suspect that was an attempt to 'tame' the movement within the context of a serenade, not a symphony. I note that Norman del Mar writes that it is very difficult to find the right speed for this over-long movement.

I think Boult's speeds work well enough (the tempo is not adagio, but adagio non troppo) because the playing is suitably light, but it has always seemed a bit breathless to me. But I'm sure that the fast speed is a reasoned one.

Personally, I prefer Kertesz.

I'm surprised you feel that way about one of Brahms' most serene inspirations, which for me is perfectly attuned to the pastoral, arboreal feel of the work and perfectly proportioned too, if the conductor doesn't drag her feet - 11-13 minutes is about right. Brahms knew what he was about here, for without it the work would lack an emotional core and become a mere dance-suite. (The briefer 2nd Serenade comes closer to that formal model - yet even there, the adagio is almost unbearably poignant. Marked non troppo again, it almost seems a dark reflection of, or upon, the earlier piece).

Throughout the work, the Romantic, Weberesque horns and winds are wonderfully evocative - of hunting and bucolic gaiety, yes, but also of forests themselves... cushioned by rich, glowing harmonies in the adagio, they and the orchestra speak to me of dark, warm depths - of a wood in mid-summer. This movement has none of the soul-searching, the human aching and longing that those in the symphonies both reveal and explore. It conjures a green world, unspoilt and paradisical.

"...that green
island, ringed with the rain's
bow, that we had found and would spend
the rest of our lives looking for."

(R.S.Thomas, That Place)

Brahms was never really to express such a mood again, as tragedy soon struck. Think of the contrast between Op. 11's adagio and that of Op.15.

[Pabmusic]

I'm surprised you feel that way about one of Brahms' most serene inspirations, which for me is perfectly attuned to the pastoral, arboreal feel of the work and perfectly proportioned too, if the conductor doesn't drag her feet - 11-13 minutes is about right. Brahms knew what he was about here, for without it the work would lack an emotional core and become a mere dance-suite.

I'm pleased you love the work - and it is truly lovely. I don't feel entirely comfortable about the slow movement, as I said before, and I know I am not alone (I have conducted this, by the way). I will not name names on the internet, but at least three conductors have shared their reservations with me over the years about this movement. The piece can seem unbalanced if you make too much of the slow movement - almost as if the shorter movements are makeweights. Trying to find the best balance is quite difficult, and I suspect may have contributed to the work's neglect in the concert hall - that, and its length. At nearly 50 minutes it's longer than any of the symphonies.

[jayne lee wilson]

I'm pleased you love the work - and it is truly lovely. I don't feel entirely comfortable about the slow movement, as I said before, and I know I am not alone (I have conducted this, by the way). I will not name names on the internet, but at least three conductors have shared their reservations with me over the years about this movement. The piece can seem unbalanced if you make too much of the slow movement - almost as if the shorter movements are makeweights. Trying to find the best balance is quite difficult, and I suspect may have contributed to the work's neglect in the concert hall - that, and its length. At nearly 50 minutes it's longer than any of the symphonies.

Well, keep playing it and keep trying to find the elusive balance! Fascinating to think that a listener may well have very different apperception, or "apprehension" of a piece; I love the fact that it is so extended by the adagio, that it is so different in structure and atmosphere from the "stricter" symphonic forms of the symphonies and concertos. But then I don't have to do the work, rehearsing it and playing it...

"Early" works are often more experimental and looser than "mature masterpieces", v. the 1st and 2nd Piano Concertos - but they always have their own compelling attractions, especially if, as with Brahms, the composer finds their own voice early too.

[Barbirollians]

Interesting Pabmusic - that may well explain Boult's decision to conduct the Adagio at this much more flowing tempo.

[Roehre]

There is a big problem in performing this wonderful piece. It's called a serenade and clearly has the lightness that goes with that, but Brahms lumbers it with a slow movement of full symphonic proportions and which is (I hate to admit it) a touch out of context. I know conductors sense this, and a quick survey of recordings shows performances varying from 11-16 minutes. Boult, at less than 9, positively races, but I suspect that was an attempt to 'tame' the movement within the context of a serenade, not a symphony. I note that Norman del Mar writes that it is very difficult to find the right speed for this over-long movement.

I don't share these reservations for the Serenade as it was orchestrated by Brahms ultimately, thus shaped into a full blown semi-symphonic work. Within THAT symphonic framework the slow movements is IMO not out of context, certainly if we look at it in relation to the opening as well as finale movements of the work.
There is strong evidence that the orchestration as we now know it was made as soon as Brahms realised himself the symphonic propoertions of at least the three movements I already mentioned. On top of that I haste mentioning the scherzoas well. This purposely reflects on/points back to the Scherzo of Beethoven 2 - something Brahms was fully aware of, and he was not prepared to remove that movement after being "attacked" for it: the symphonic pretension unveiled.

The slow movement does NOT fit properly within the original nonet-version of this serenade. In that one I agree with Pabmusic's remarks and feelings that it is to "heavy" -if you like- for a (mainly) wind-serenade, with its mood as well as with its proportions overstaying its welcome.
But here we have to point to the works which stood model for this work: Beethoven's Septet opus 20 and Schubert's Octet opus 166/D.803 (and Mozart's Gran Partita KV361 for that matter), the first two with definite symphonic pretensions too (The septet even being performed as a multi-mvt symphony [Toscanini!], the octet in more than one meaning a study for the Great C-major).

The Serenade opus 11 is one of the scores I regularly return to, it being a work which -though the composer being in his early twenties- is marked with all the Brahmsian fingerprints we find in his work upto the very last ones. In that respect it is certainly a seminal work. Apart from all this: I love it.