Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, on May 7, 1833, and died in Vienna, Austria, on April 3, 1897. The first performance of the Third Symphony took place in Vienna on December 2, 1883, with Hans Richter conducting the Vienna Philharmonic. The Symphony No. 3 is scored for two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, timpani, and strings. Approximate performance time is thirty-three minutes.

Brahms composed his Four Symphonies during two relatively concentrated periods. The First Symphony was anxiously awaited and long in arriving. Despite early encouragement from the likes of mentor Robert Schumann, the young Brahms was fearful of embarking upon a course that would prompt inevitable comparisons to Ludwig van Beethoven and his magnificent Nine Symphonies. Brahms was already in his thirty-seventh year when he professed to conductor Hermann Levi: “I shall never write a symphony. You have no idea how the likes of us feel when we hear the tramp of a giant like him beside us.”

Brahms finally summoned his courage and, at the age of forty-three, completed his First Symphony (1876). With that ordeal behind him, Brahms composed his Symphony No. 2 the following year.

Six more years elapsed before Brahms returned to symphonic composition. Brahms completed his Third Symphony in the summer of 1883 while residing in the spa village of Wiesbaden. The Fourth and final Symphony came two years later. Hans Richter and the Vienna Philharmonic presented the world premiere of the Brahms Third at a December 2, 1883, concert.

Brahms was 50 and at the height of his powers when he completed his Third Symphony. The magnificent work betrays no vestiges of the composer’s earlier struggles with the specter of Beethoven. In the Third Symphony, Brahms is very much his own man—a confident, assured master, creating music of extraordinary unity, concentration, and beauty.

The Symphony No. 3 is in four movements. The first (Allegro con brio) opens with the winds and brass boldly proclaiming a three-note motif, based upon the pitches F-Ab-F, a musical representation of the composer’s motto “Frei aber froh” (“Free but happy”). This motto is a rejoinder to the F-A-E “Frei aber einsam” (“Free but alone”) motif of Brahms’s friend, the Austro-Hungarian violinist, composer, and conductor Joseph Joachim. The slow-tempo second movement (Andante) is based on two themes. The clarinets and bassoons introduce the lovely opening melody. A solo clarinet and bassoon present a more somber theme that will return in the Symphony’s finale. The third movement (Poco allegretto), in A—B—A form, features a hauntingly beautiful principal melody, introduced by the cellos, alternating with a central pastoral section. The stormy finale (Allegro) finally resolves to an extended episode, featuring a magical reprise of the “Frei aber froh” motif and the opening movement’s principal theme.

Program notes by Ken Meltzer