LDV94

16 BRAHMS ∙ PIANO CONCERTO IN D MINOR OP.15 Then comes the sublime Adagio, unquestionably one of Brahms’s finest movements. Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini (Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord), the composer writes mysteriously at the head of the score, quoting from the Ordinary of the Mass. Perhaps he is thinking of himself, of the day he had appeared to the Schumanns a few years earlier like an angel . . . The muted strings intone a chorale that might be by Bach and seems to descend from heaven or to flow like the Rhine, the ‘mystical’ river that bore Schumann’s soul. After the fury of the Maestoso, peace and tranquillity emerge from this moving lament, which swells like a great choir. One has the impression of listening to certain sections of Ein deutsches Requiem , between tears and light, mourning and consolation, with emotion generated by the shifts between major and minor that sublimate the sorrow. Soon the piano, increasingly alone, guides the movement to a climax as poignant as Beethoven’s finest achievements. The chorale becomes a glorious triumphal march that unites the two geniuses in the heaven of music.