An informative and entertaining audio-visual concert at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo (2002) with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the violinist Gil Shaham conducted by Claudio Abbado and hosted by Wolfgang Sandberger who analyzes the composer Johannes Brahms's most famous works. Johannes Brahms - Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 6:21 I. Allegro non troppo 15:30 II. Adagio 21:57 III: Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace Watch more episodes of the series "Discovering Masterpieces of Classical Music": goo.gl/KBV6cR Subscribe to EuroArts: goo.gl/jrui3M It is years since I have seen a score that has given me any real pleasure, whereas I have seen many thathave had the capacity to make me feel physically unwell," Brahms admitted in a letter in 1859. I do not think that there has ever been an age that has mistreated art as badly as our own age mistreats music. I can only hope that something better is being produced in secret, otherwise our age will look like a dunghill the history of art" These pessimistic musings could hardly be further removed from the 19 century's caracteristic faith in progress, with its conviction that the course of history is an unending ascent to the summit "Children! Do something new! something new! and again something new!" demanded Wagner, adding: "If you cling to the past, then the devil of uncreativity will claim you for his own, and you will be the most melancholy of artists!" The stance that Brahms adopted was not only different from Wagner's, it was the exact opposite. If there was a high point in the history of music, then Brahms located it not in the future but in the past. "In comparison to today's music," he wrote of the arias in Bach's B-minor Mass, for example, "they are on an incomparably higher level, for our own art is simply so pitiful and wretched." As for Haydn, Brahms thought that "There was a fellow! How miserable we are in comparison to a man like that!" Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833, the son of a musician. He became famous virtually overnight when his mentor and discoverer Robert Schumann wrote an eye-catching article about him that he headed "New Paths" and that hailed him as the messiah of German musical life. His early works - piano sonatas, songs and chamber works - had soon found their way into print, but a period of reflection and self-criticism was now indispensable for the young composer. He chose as his motto a comment by Goethe's confidant, Johann Peter Eckermann: "Form is something shaped by a thousand years of striving on the part of the most outstanding artists, but every subsequent artist cannot acquire it quickly enough." In keeping with this maxim, Brahms spent the 1850s devoting himself to exercises in different historical styles and contrapuntal studies and immersing himself in ciassic examples of church music and the classical symphony. It was a matter of indifference to him whether he was now regarded as pursuing 'old paths", rather than new ones, for it was not his ideal to create anything "new" but to write music based on the timeless and imperishable forms ofthe "most outstanding artists", music which, in his own words, would "last". Brahms's years of apprenticeship were restless and gave way to a further period of wanderings before he finally settled in Vienna, the city of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. It was a programmatic choice. And yet Brahms never ran the risk of lapsing into a bloodless historicism. Instead, he favored a warm, sonorous, sumptuous, full-toned sound world, the colors of an Indien summer. He wrote monumental symphonies and lively Hungarian Dances, portentous string quartets and voluptuous Liebeslieder Waitzes. In this way he became a distinctive artist who reinvented new forms and cast his spell on later generations of composers, a spell that lasted far beyond his death in 1897.

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