It’s time for our annual steel-cage death match between Johannes Brahms and Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky. For the shared birthday anniversary of classical music’s greatest frenemies, WWFM The Classical Network will celebrate with a mixed menu of their music, today from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. EDT.
Whether your personal taste runs to Brahms, the great classicist among Romantics, or Tchaikovsky, always heart-on-the-sleeve, we hope you will support the tremendous variety of music offered year-round on The Classical Network by contributing right now at 1-888-232-1212, or online at wwfm.org.
As an added bonus, George Marriner Maull will cap this special day with a program of music and discussion, featuring members of The Discovery Orchestra, coming to you live from Mercer County Community College’s Black Box Theater, adjacent to the WWFM studios. This very special edition of “Inside Music” will commence tonight at 8 pm. (Please note: “Inside Music” is ordinarily heard on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month at 7:30 p.m.)
Learn more about tonight’s broadcast here:
https://www.wwfm.org/post/inside-music-goes-live-brahmstchaikovsky-birthday-celebration
While Brahms and Tchaikovsky were both born on this date – Brahms in 1833, and Tchaikovsky in 1840 – their stars didn’t quite align when it came to what they wanted to express in their art.
Tchaikovsky notoriously confided to his diary, “I have played over the music of that scoundrel Brahms. What a giftless bastard!”
For his part, Brahms demonstrated his slight regard of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony by falling asleep, during a rehearsal, in the composer’s presence.
The two were finally brought together socially on New Year’s Day, 1888. And surprise! They actually delighted in one another’s company.
“I’ve been on the booze with Brahms,” Tchaikovsky wrote. “He is tremendously nice – not at all proud as I’d expected but remarkably straightforward and entirely without arrogance. He has a very cheerful disposition, and I must say that the hours I spent in his company have left me with nothing but pleasant memories.”
The following year, the two met again in Hamburg. That’s when Brahms slept through the Fifth Symphony. Tchaikovsky bore it lightly and was convivial throughout the meal they shared afterward. Although Brahms was harsh in his assessment of the last movement of the symphony and Tchaikovsky confessed an overall aversion to Brahms’ style, the evening was full of good cheer and ended with Tchaikovsky inviting Brahms to visit him in Russia.
How large a role alcohol may have played in the two men’s warmth for one another we can only guess. It was not just anyone who could be Brahms’ drinking buddy.
Regardless of their mutual affection, the two never could reconcile themselves to one another’s music. After a lovely evening with Brahms, during which both men drank and smoked prodigiously, while Adolph Brodsky – the violinist who had introduced Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto – rehearsed a Brahms piano trio, Mrs. Brodsky asked Tchaikovsky what he had thought of the piece.
“Don’t be angry with me, my dear friend,” he said, “but I did not like it.”
Happily, we can enjoy both men’s contributions, thanks to your continued support of classical music, in all its variety, on WWFM – The Classical Network!
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