The meetings of the ladies' choral society were recommenced on Brahms' return to Hamburg in July. Fräulein Porubszky, with whom he had been on terms of lively friendship during her year of membership, which had seen him a frequent visitor at her aunt's house in the Bockmannstrasse, had now returned to Vienna, where the reader will presently renew her acquaintance as Frau Faber. The members of the choir were, however, one and all thoroughgoing admirers of their conductor, and amongst the houses open for the holding of the practices, two at which he became intimate, must be particularly mentioned—those of Herr Völckers and his two daughters at Hamm, and of the Hallier family at Eppendorf, both at that time almost in the country.
The large Eppendorf garden was the scene of many a pleasant gathering of the singers; now and again they performed there before an invited audience of friends. Hübbe tells of an open-air evening party, with an illumination, vocal contributions by the choir, which were conducted by the director from the branch of a tree, and fireworks in the intervals. The Halliers lived in town during the winter, and Brahms often dropped in to their informal Wednesday evenings, which were attended by the artists and art-lovers of Hamburg. He was good-natured about playing in this familiar, sociable circle, and would perform one thing after another, unless particularly interested in conversation, when no entreaty could get him to the piano. As his Detmold friends had found out, he formed definite opinions on most current topics of interest, and did not hesitate to avow them, or to confess the unorthodoxy of his religious views. He went constantly also to Avé Lallement's house, where a few men used to meet regularly to read Shakespeare and other authors, and found time to attend lectures on art history and to study Latin under Dr. Emil Hallier, and history under Professor Ægidi of the Academic Gymnasium.
The autumn of this year was signalized by the appearance of a new and very great work—the String Sextet in B flat—the first of Brahms' important compositions to attain general popularity. Joachim was its sponsor, producing it at his Quartet concert at Hanover of October 20; and it was partly owing to his enthusiastic appreciation that the composition was so quickly and widely received into public favour.
It would be beside the mark to discuss, in a narrative which has no technical aim, the musical characteristics of a work that has become so entirely familiar as this one, which has long since taken its place among the few classics that attract an audience on their own merits, apart from the consideration of whether a public favourite is to lead their performance. It may, however, be remarked that the String Sextet in B flat is a work to which neither 'if' nor 'but' can be attached. Both in beauty and variety of idea and in spontaneous clearness of development, it is without flaw, and these qualities combine with the fineness of its proportions, perfectly conceived and perfectly wrought out, to place it with few rivals amongst the greatest examples of chamber music. Fresh, happy, and ingenuous, the mastery it displays over the art which conceals art may be compared with that of Mozart himself. With it opens the great series of works of its class which reveals the powerful individuality of Brahms in all its moods, and includes the first and second Pianoforte Quartets, the Pianoforte Quintet, the second String Sextet, and the Horn Trio—works which, in the author's opinion, were not surpassed even during later periods of the composer's magnificent activity in this domain.
Frau Schumann, Joachim, and Johannes met in November at Leipzig, the two last-named artists to assist actively on the 26th of the month at the annual Pension-Fund concert of the Gewandhaus, which was given under the direction of Carl Reinecke, the lately appointed successor to Julius Rietz. Both Johannes and Joachim appeared as composers—Brahms with the second Serenade, Joachim with the Hungarian Concerto—and each conducted the other's work. Their own artistic conscience, with each other's and Frau Schumann's approval, and perhaps that of a few other friends, was their best reward. The audience was cold; the daily press left the concert unmentioned; the Zeitschrift dismissed it with a few dubious sentences—perhaps not ungenerous treatment under the circumstances—and the Signale, candid as ever, declared the serenade to be a terribly monotonous work which showed the composer's poverty of invention, together with his despairing attempts to appear learned. Joachim's concerto was pronounced decidedly richer in invention than his friend's work, but rather monotonous also, and certainly very much too long.
Frau Schumann, nothing dismayed by these remarks, introduced at her concert of December 8, given in the small hall of the Gewandhaus, the very beautiful Variations on an original theme, which, though hardly suitable for general concert performance, should be much better known than they are. They show the composer in one of his Bach-Beethoven-Brahms moods, by which is here meant his learned and profoundly serious vein touched with exquisite tenderness. The theme, in three-four time, has about it, nevertheless, something of the pace of a grave march, and the opening variations are tender reflections on a solemn idea. In the eighth and ninth we have the imposing tramp of pomp, whilst the eleventh and last breathes forth tones of mysterious spirituality which subdue the mind of the listener as to some passing divine influence.
These Variations together with the earlier set on a Hungarian melody, and the three Duets for Soprano and Contralto, Op. 20, were published by Simrock in 1861.
The fact that Brahms' sextet was placed in the programme of the Hafner-Lee concert announced for January 4 affords evidence that the composer was gradually penetrating with his works to the heart of musical life in his native city, though he may not have enjoyed the particular favour of its public. The Quartet-Entertainments of these artists were among the regularly recurring artistic events of Hamburg, and enjoyed unfailing support. Hafner, a Viennese by birth and a Schubert enthusiast, had found a second home in the northern city, and was accounted its first violinist; and in the 'cellist Lee he had a sympathetic colleague. He was not, however, destined to lead the sextet. His sudden illness caused the postponement of the concert, and his death followed. The work was played in Hamburg from the manuscript by his successor in the enterprise, John Böie, with Honroth, Breyther, Kayser, Wiemann, and Lee, and with immediate success. The impression made was so great that the work was repeated three times within the following few weeks by the same concert-party.