LDV94

GEOFFROY COUTEAU ∙ ORCHESTRE NATIONAL DE METZ 15 However, even if early commentators sometimes suggested it was, this Maestoso is by no means a kind of concerto grosso with piano! Glenn Gould, in his essay ‘N’aimez-vous pas Brahms?’, calls it ‘an odd work’ because of ‘this very struggle of the imagination – imperfect, protruding, slapping life into the work – against the demands of the classical exercise’. Beneath this apparent awkwardness lies the ambiguity that Schoenberg would later emphasise but which, he claimed, is precisely what Brahms transcends. On the contrary, in Schoenberg’s view it is his non-conformism combined with a certain academicism that makes ‘Brahms the progressive’ so significant a figure. For both composers, life is nourished not by abolishing the past but by sublimating its traditions. Right from the initial explosion, a sort of primeval storm, with its furious cries from the strings underpinned by the timpani, we plunge directly into a gigantic northern ballad, in which terror, savage power and tenderness intermingle in the same fantastical lyricism. A veritable ‘biblical epic in music’ whose powerfully evocative telluric trills, later taken up by the piano (and reminiscent of Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata), might represent the cries of Moses urging the Red Sea to open up beneath his feet. The entry of the piano, long after the introduction, suggests an apparition, like a wise man walking serenely on those raging waves; it breaks radically with this deluge, as if seeking to calm it, before taking up its thematic elements. Throughout the movement, despite its dominant role, the piano remains integrated within the shifting orchestral mass, thus demolishing the ritual confrontation that prevails in the concerto genre.