Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Brahms Experience

The Essay: Brahms Experience: Episode 4: Brahms and Freud

Music: Classical

Brahms Experience

Episode 4

Episode 4: Brahms and Freud

Brahms and Freud

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Brahms Experience, Brahms and FreudClose menu

Lesley Chamberlain asks what can be learnt by comparing the work of Brahms and Freud.

Writer Lesley Chamberlain asks what can be learnt by comparing the lives and work of Brahms and Freud.

Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 4 of 5.

Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.

Brahms and and Freud co-existed in Vienna, as psychoanalysis was being born. But they belong to two vastly different epochs: what can we learn by setting them side by side?

Often at a loss for words, frequently gruff and spiky, Brahms was a man with complex personal traits. Devastated by his parents' disintegrating marriage, he found relationships exceptionally difficult.

A question Freud once asked of us all might help us understand the hidden personality of Johannes Brahms: what is the sublimation of sexual desire, and how much unfulfilled libido can we bear?

Writer Lesley Chamberlain takes us back to the Vienna of the 1890s, where Brahms was composing his late masterpieces and Freud was carrying out his groundbreaking early work.


Producer: Melvin Rickarby.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Series of essays about 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms

Series of essays about 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms, recorded in front of an audience at St George's Bristol

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Brahms Experience

Episode 4: Brahms and Freud

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3