Premiered in Leipzig on January 1, 1879, with Joseph Joachim as soloist and Brahms conducting. Joachim insisted on opening the concert with the Beethoven Violin Concerto and closing with the Brahms. 

Johannes Brahms was twenty years old when he first met the great Hungarian-born violinist Joseph Joachim. While touring as an accompanist, Brahms made Joachim’s acquaintance; the two became instant friends. Although Brahms had his greatest works still to come, Joachim was already a celebrated and brilliant violinist. Though associated with many distinguished musicians of his time, it was the bond with Johannes Brahms that was the strongest, both musically and personally. 

Brahms met Robert Schumann and his wife Clara through Joachim’s insistence. The visit changed the young composer’s life: Robert introduced Brahms to the public and Clara became a confidante and treasured colleague. Joachim and Brahms spent many hours with the Schumann’s in Düsseldorf, and together they stood by Clara during her husband’s unfortunate illness. Their shared dislike for the newer works of Wagner and Liszt spurred the two to compose a letter to Liszt expressing their disapproval. This letter, while not deterring Liszt, cemented their friendship and created a struggle between the Brahmsian and Wagnerian camps. Brahms and Joachim remained close over the years, producing sizeable correspondence full of captivating details of Germany’s leading musicians. 

During summer holidays of 1877 and 1878, Brahms wrote three important works while passing his time in the idyllic countryside of Pörtschach in southern Austria: the Symphony No. 2, the Violin Concerto and the First Violin Sonata. Many scholars have commented on the endearing nature and gentle ease of these three works, and after twenty-five years of coaxing, Brahms f inally composed a violin concerto for his friend. Brahms picked the key of D-Major, also the tonality of his Second Symphony, and planned the concerto in four movements, an unprecedented scheme. In collaboration, Brahms and Joachim worked on many details of violin technique, and several of Joachim’s suggestions were incorporated into the final version of the score. By the time the two premiered the work in Leipzig on New Year’s Day 1879, Brahms had also incorporated Joachim’s f ingerings and bowings.

Daring subtle references to Beethoven’s Violin Concerto, Brahms seems to have been the first composer to match the scope of Beethoven’s masterpiece. Inviting the comparison himself, Brahms picked the same key and wrote for the same soloist who had recently begun performing Beethoven’s concerto. In each work, both Beethoven and Brahms treat the violin and the orchestra as equals. Yet, while the Brahms has many stormy moments with minor-mode harmonies and excited, tense rhythms, the Beethoven is peaceful and serene. Coincidentally, the same year as Brahms’ concerto, Tchaikovsky composed his own.

Critical response was conflicting due to the concerto’s extraordinary length and breadth. Though symphonies in the late 19th century were expected to push the limits, not so with concertos. However, it was Brahms’ own decision to abandon the four-movement design and to replace the two inner movements with a single Adagio. The discarded movement was successfully used later in the fourmovement Second Piano Concerto, which Brahms had put aside for his Op. 77. The Violin Concerto’s subsequent traditional design is nevertheless of symphonic proportions. Standing as one of the largest and most challenging works in the solo violin repertoire, the piece perplexed the public with its unprecedented complexity. The first movement was too ‘modern’ for the audience and caused Hans von Bülow to call it a “concerto versus the violin.” 

The massive Allegro non troppo presents a range of characters, from stately to lyrical and peaceful to agitated, requiring consummate expertise from the solo violin. Brahms formulated an innovative way to write a concerto, by composing a double exposition to open the movement, with a simple contemplative and triadic introductory theme. The orchestra, without soloist, presents the thematic material in one single phrase, blossoming into the solo violin’s fiery variation on the orchestra’s opening material. The development section, a la Beethoven, presents a full harmonic journey, with side trips to harmonically distant reaches. As a final nod to tradition, Brahms reins in the orchestra near the end of the movement and gives the soloist the opportunity to improvise a cadenza. This is the last major concerto to grant that license (even Beethoven had started composing his own), although with a musician of Joachim’s stature there was no concern.

The Adagio opens with a rapturous oboe solo accompanied by a wind ensemble. Critical of the concerto, the great violinist Pablo de Sarasate once remarked that he had no desire to perform a movement that required the soloist to “listen, violin in hand, to how the oboe plays the only melody in the whole piece.” Yet the solo violin elegantly embellishes the oboe’s tender love song with lavish figurations, taking it through several stages of transformations, involving many subtle changes of key. The lyrical theme is contrasted with a more agitated central section. There is an abrupt dissimilarity between the reticent ending and the spirited opening of the rondo finale. Ever humble and self-effacing, Brahms termed this movement his “feeble adagio,” but the Adagio proves to be full of character and intense emotion.

The finale, Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace, is a perfect answer to the bird song and tender melodies of the first and second movements. This rondo is usually described as being in the “Gypsy” style, which Brahms also used in his Hungarian Dances and the last movement of his Piano Quartet, Op. 25. A Hungarian-flavored melody spiced with double stops is an intentional reference to Joachim’s national heritage. The second section, presenting a tempestuous dottedrhythm figure, gradually returns to a restatement of the main melody. A more lyrical central section gives way to dance variations and syncopation. The energetic “Gypsy” theme is followed by contrasting episodes, and returns again and again, ever more excitedly. The concerto comes to a close as wonderfully enchanted as it began with a long, dramatic coda in which both soloist and orchestra share the main theme once more.

While the Concerto is long-standing, the friendship was not, nearly coming to an end only two years after the premiere. Joachim, a notoriously jealous husband, unreasonably accused his wife, mezzosoprano Amalie Weiss, of adultery. Brahms corresponded with Weiss telling her what he thought of the matter, and the letter was made public during the couple’s divorce. After the break, Joachim refused to speak to Brahms or answer his letters, yet he continued to perform Brahms’ music everywhere. In time, Brahms made a peace offering by composing the Double Concerto for Violin and Cello, and the two were reunited musically, but the friendship was ruined.