Brahms’s 5th Symphony
Jun 25th, 2009 by oldfogey
There isn’t one, of course. But for some obscure reason Arnold Schoenberg felt the need of it. So he arranged Brahms’s 1st Piano Quartet for full symphony orchestra as a substitute.
It’s way over the top - massive orchestra, over 100, including xylophone! - and absurdly Romantic. It rather belies the notion of Schoenberg as the cold modernist. It has much in common with his own early Romantic works - ‘Transfigured Night’ and ‘Gurrelieder’ - lush, highly coloured tones, an almost sensual intensity. He explores Brahms like some demented Freudian psychoanalyst drawing out a hidden sexuality in the music barely hinted at in Brahms’s original.
It’s a travesty - but I adore it.
Here is the luscious slow movement, from a public concert on 1 November 1981 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Erich Leinsdorf.
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