Composer of the Week: Brahms

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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Johannes Brahms (1833-1897): More than Friends

More than Friends

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), More than Friends

Kate Molleson tells the story of Brahms’s all-consuming friendship with the Schumanns.

Kate Molleson explores the life and relationships of Johannes Brahms through the keyhole of the places he called home. Today, Brahms’s all-consuming friendship with the Schumanns.

Kate Molleson tells the story of Brahms‘s all-consuming friendship with the Schumanns.

Johannes Brahms, the bearded and magisterial Romantic composer, could certainly do grandeur when required. But really, he was more interested in what music meant in ordinary life - how it can whisper, joke and console. He was a man who tried to find a place to belong all his life, wrote for the people closest to him, and that fondness is writ large in his music. All this week, Kate Molleson focuses on Brahms at home, revealing the subtle sides of this sometimes brawny composer – the tender heart behind the famous beard - through the music he wrote for himself and his friends to play. 

Today, we follow Brahms on an autumnal pilgrimage that sets his life spinning. Aimless and restless, he finds anchoring and inspiration in his new best friends, the Schumanns. Little does he know that his next few years will be overturned by tragedy, dramas and a heart-wrenching dilemma…

Einförmig ist der Liebe Gram, Op 113 No 13 
Women of Leipzig Radio Choir  
Wolf-Dieter Hauschild, conductor 

Sonata in C major (4th movement)  
Lars Vogt, piano

FAE Sonata (3rd movement – Scherzo) 
Isabelle Faust, violin 
Alexander Melnikov, piano

Piano Trio, Op 8  (3rd movement – Adagio)
Christian Tetzlaff, violin 
Tanja Teztlaff, cello 
Lars Vogt, piano

Geistliches Lied, Op 30 
Tenebrae 
Nigel Short, conductor

Intermezzo, Op 117 No 2 
Benjamin Grosvenor, piano

Sextet No 2 (1st mvt – Allegro non troppo)
Nash Ensemble


Produced by Amelia Parker for BBC Audio Wales and West

Composer of the Week: Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

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.

Kate Molleson focuses on the music Brahms wrote for himself and his friends to play.

Kate Molleson focuses on Brahms at home, revealing the subtle sides of this sometimes brawny composer through the music he wrote for himself and his friends to play.

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Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

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