LDV94

GEOFFROY COUTEAU ∙ ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE METZ 13 According to Joseph Joachim, the following summer, while still deeply shocked by Schumann’s suicide attempt of February 1854, Brahms conceived a sonata for two pianos, already in D minor; he then orchestrated the first movement. His close friends, Joachim, Clara Schumann and the composer Julius Grimm, advised him to convert his sonata into a concerto. Haunted by Schumann’s tragedy, Brahms planned to end his work with a funeral march, the sketches of which were later to serve as material for the second movement of Ein deutsches Requiem . In 1855, he wrote to Clara Schumann: ‘Just think what I dreamt last night. I had used my ill-fated symphony for a piano concerto, and I was playing it.’ The compositional process was launched, but it was not until after Schumann’s death on 29 July 1856 that Brahms went back to work, turning it into a tribute to his friend. He wrote to Clara: ‘I am painting a tender portrait of you that will become the Adagio.’ In fact, that tender portrait, which is the material of the second movement, is more like a lament for Robert . . .