The first movement (Maestoso, D minor, 6-8) has a long orchestral introduction before the piano enters. Over a roll on the kettledrums the chief subject is announced in the strings:
The second subject is given out by the piano in F major. The movement ends with an extended and brilliant coda. The second movement (Adagio, D major, 6-4) bears in the manuscript score the motto: “Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini.” Max Kalbeck, Brahm’s biographer, says that this inscription refers to Robert Schumann, whose death had affected Brahms deeply and whom he had sometimes addressed as “Mynheer Domine.” The first theme, to which the fanciful may fit the Latin words, appears in the strings and bassoons, to be taken up later by the solo instrument. The movement has a contrasting middle section. The finale is a long and elaborate Rondo (Allegro non troppo, D minor, 2-4), ending in a majestic and triumphant coda.
This concerto, owing to the exceeding prominence given to the orchestra, really ranks as an orchestral composition, and it was years before Brahms attempted another on a like scale. In 1873 he brought out the “Variations on a Theme by Haydn.” Though meanwhile he had written copiously, only the two modest Serenades had been composed for orchestra.
Variations for Orchestra on a Theme by Haydn, Op. 56a
Now a permanent resident of Vienna, Brahms spent his summer holiday in 1873 at Tutzing on the Starnbergersee in southern Bavaria. A version of the Variations for two pianos Brahms marked “Tutzing, July, 1873.” Whether it was the first of the two versions we do not know. On November 2 the orchestral version was brought out in Vienna at a Philharmonic Concert, Otto Dessoff conducting.
The theme by Haydn comes from an unpublished divertimento for wind instruments, preserved at the State Library in Berlin, which is inscribed “Divertimento mit dem Chorale St. Antoni.” Though the melody of the chorale is usually supposed to be Haydn’s own, we cannot be sure that he had not taken it from a chorale that has now disappeared.
In Haydn’s key of B-flat major the theme
