Growing up with Brahms: Age 15-25 & Symphonies 1, 2, and 4.

August 27, 2011 at 7:09 AM

Age 15: The No. 2

So when I was 15, Brahms Symphony No.2 was the first symphony I learned, ever. Even in the back of the second violin section in the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra, the work was so enormous that I felt at a loss to grasp it all. I'd struggle to get the notes out yet I also found myself getting swept away in the movements. I was in grade 10, sported enormous glasses and I had just started to study my instrument seriously. We performed it at Roy Thompson Hall.

Age 24: The No. 4

Around last Christmas time, I felt the orchestra bug again. I had just recently returned to Manhattan from Beijing after studying with Professor Min JiaYi at the Tianjin Conservatory of Music, and my practice time was heavily packed with etudes. I had just ended the most serious relationship of my life and I missed playing in a group. I got in touch with conductor Timothy Hutto of the New York Symphonic Arts Ensemble, and dove into the rep just two rehearsals before the concert. It wasn't like learning the 2nd symphony all those years ago, where we had hours of coaching. Now was more seasoned, loaded with technique and whipped through the piece a week, getting to know its familiar contours and harmonies, like catching up with an old friend. The concert went well and it turned out to be the perfect pick-me-up for winter blues.

Age 25 minus 29 days: the No.1

Now, I am starting school for music again, and the excerpts I'm preparing for the orchestra seating audition are from Symphony No.1. It's a much different creature form the 2 and the 4. It's so much darker, it almost reminds me of Schumann. Yet you can see his language taking shape, and the beginnings of what he would become. It makes me wonder: who will I become when I finally play Symphony No.3?

From Karen Allendoerfer
Posted on August 30, 2011 at 3:50 AM

I was 14, in 10th grade, and in the back of the 2nds in the Greater Buffalo Youth Orchestra when I first learned Brahms' 2nd. It was, in a way, also the first symphony I learned seriously, although we did some Haydn and Vivaldi in high school.

Then I played it again, 30 years later, in the front of the 1sts, in a community orchestra last year. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I remembered. Those early lessons in great music stay with you your whole life.

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Growing up with Brahms: Age 15-25 & Symphonies 1, 2, and 4.

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