Shortly after Johannes Brahms met Robert and Clara Schumann in 1853, Robert Schumann published an article in an influential German music magazine announcing the arrival of a composer to watch. As Schumann wrote,  

Many a new significant talent has appeared on the scene; a new force in music seemed imminent, as witnessed by many aspiring artists of recent times, even though their work is known to a rather narrow circle only. I felt that in following the progress of these select ones with the keenest of interest, that one day there must suddenly emerge the one who would be chosen to express the most exalted spirit of the times in an ideal manner, one who would not bring us mastery in gradual stages but who, like Minerva, would spring fully armed from the head of Jove. And he has arrived—a youth at whose cradle the graces and heroes of old stood guard. His name is Johannes Brahms. 

Brahms was doubtless flattered by Schumann's characterization, but he was also concerned: “The public praise that you have deigned to bestow upon me will have so greatly increased the expectations of the musical world regarding my work that I do not know how I shall manage to do even approximate justice to it,” he wrote to Schumann shortly after the article's publication. “You will readily understand that I am straining every nerve to bring as little disgrace as possible on your name.” 

Living up to these expectations—both those of his supporters and those he placed on himself—was an issue Brahms dealt with for his entire career, especially when it came to writing symphonies. Brahms avoided the genre for years, composing several proto-symphonic works before finally producing his First Symphony—sometimes called “Beethoven’s Tenth”—at the ripe old age of 43. The symphony was worth the wait. As critic Eduard Hanslick proclaimed, “What symphony of the last thirty or forty years is even remotely comparable with those of Brahms?”  

While his First Symphony took nearly twenty years to compose, Brahms wrote his second in about a year—and its extroverted, lively character reflects the ease with which it was composed. Brahms attributed the work’s sunny mood to the surroundings in which he composed it—Pörtschach, an Austrian summer resort on Lake Wörth. Many regard the work as Brahms’s own “pastoral” symphony. “Pörtschach is an exquisite spot,” he wrote to his friends, “and I have found a lovely and apparently pleasant abode in the Castle! You may tell everybody just this; it will impress them. But I may add in parentheses that I have only two rooms in the housekeeper’s quarters. They could not get my piano up the stairs, it would have burst the walls.”

The first movement, marked Allegro non troppo, begins peacefully before exploding in a profusion of earnest melodic development, while the contrasting second theme recalls his famous “Cradle Song.” The ensuing Adagio non troppo is characteristically rapturous, written in a straightforward three-part form that pushes the lush melody to the foreground. After an unapologetically bucolic third movement, marked Allegro grazioso, quasi andantino, a bustling Allegro con spirito—nearly heroic in tone—propels the work to a triumphant close.

©Jennifer More, 2021