Pablo Heras-Casado © Milagro Elstak
Wiener Symphoniker / Heras-Casado
Brahms: Symphonien Nr. 1 & 2
Monday
9
January
2023
19:30 – ca. 21:30
Großer Saal
Presented by
Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft
Over waves and cliffs
Johannes Brahms' symphonies have sometimes been described as surveys of landscapes of the soul. But they were actual and quite different landscapes in which the elective Viennese designed his four great sound buildings. He had already spent 14 years working on his first, which he was unable to complete because of his own high demands and because of the giant Beethoven, who stood frighteningly behind his shoulders. When he spent three months on Rügen in 1876, where he made extensive walks along the chalk coast, he finally succeeded in taking the essential step. »A beautiful symphony is stuck on the Wissower Klinken«, he wrote to his publisher. While writing the Second, on the other hand, he was flooded by a flood of inspiration. As early as the summer of 1877, when he was staying in Pörtschach on Lake Wörthersee, a letter to a friend said, »Here the melodies flow so freely that one must be careful not to step on them.«