Description

Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73, was composed by Johannes Brahms in the summer of 1877, during a visit to Pörtschach am Wörthersee, a town in the Austrian province of Carinthia. Its composition was brief in comparison with the 21 years it took him to complete his First Symphony.

The cheery and almost pastoral mood of the symphony often invites comparison with Beethoven‘s Sixth Symphony, but, perhaps mischievously, Brahms wrote to his publisher on 22 November 1877 that the symphony “is so melancholy that you will not be able to bear it. I have never written anything so sad, and the score must come out in mourning.”^[1]

The premiere was given in Vienna on 30 December 1877 by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Hans Richter; Walter Frisch notes that it had originally been scheduled for 9 December, but “in one of those little ironies of music history, it had to be postponed [because] the players were so preoccupied with learning Das Rheingold by Richard Wagner.”^[2] A typical performance lasts between 40 and 50 minutes.