From conductors and pianists to horn players and sopranos, ten great aficionados reveal their all-time favourite work by the German composer Johannes Brahms. Yes, here we have a top 10 of Brahms works, across the chamber, orchestral and solo piano forms.
Top 15 Brahms works: 1 to 5
1. ‘Die Mainacht’ (‘The May Night’)
The song ‘Die Mainacht’ is about the moon rising up one night in May. The colours and the light that reflect from the moon stir up all kinds of emotions. So it’s all about the power of the moon, reminding someone of what he has lost. I love it so much. It’s very moving, very touching.
It has a simple melody at the beginning before the song gradually becomes dramatic, with a depressive feeling and atmosphere. It has so many aspects of Brahms on just four pages of music, which makes it really interesting every time I sing it.
But it’s not trying to be intellectual; it’s just very open, very honest, very clear. Every time I read through it, it reaches me somehow.
Juliane Banse, soprano
2. Piano Quartet No. 2, Op. 26
The Piano Quartet Op. 26 is a mix of a piano concerto and chamber music, with one of the most amazing slow movements. You can feel Brahms’s youth in it and you can sense, in the slow movement, his tenderness. There’s a phrase in that movement when the violin and cello play together which seems to come from the sky.
Playing Brahms’s chamber music is like taking a bath with essential oils
What I love to do is to play Op. 25 in the first part of a concert, then Op. 26 – and then you have an idea of what Brahms can be. Playing Brahms’s chamber music is like taking a bath with essential oils. And he makes you feel like you’re embracing somebody very warmly.
Renaud Capuçon, violinist
3. Symphony No. 1
The majesty and the mysteriousness of the fourth movement of the First Symphony still remains for me a superior piece of mastery. The darkness, the complexity and the almost mystic start to the movement blossoms with Brahms’s big chorale-like melody in the major key.
- Brahms’s Symphony No. 1 featured in our list of the 20 greatest symphonies of all time
It’s so soft compared to the huge chorale in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. Of course, Beethoven was a great father-figure presence in Brahms’s life, but he was just an example for Brahms. The young composer had the ingenuity to build his own universe.
When the melody appears, it’s like the sun shining suddenly after this dark introduction. I want to mention the horn melody near the start which is straight from the Alps, and is a miracle of sound for me.
Riccardo Chailly, conductor
4. Clarinet Quintet
For me, the Brahms Clarinet Quintet documents all the feelings associated with Brahms: it’s like his life story. From the first phrase to the last there’s so much expectation. It takes you through this long journey and when you get to the last chord you feel that you’ve reached the end. It really touches my heart because, even before I played the clarinet, it was the first thing I heard on LP.
I can visualise myself even now as a little kid staring up into space listening to this incredible piece of music. Brahms’s writing for stringed instruments is amazing – so well crafted and thought out, and the clarinet part is equally brilliant. Put the whole thing together and you’ve got a work of genius.
Michael Collins, clarinet
5. Piano Sonata in F minor
There is something very substantial about the F Minor Piano Sonata, because it’s got all his youthful enthusiasm and skill and pianistic prowess. But it is also pointing to something very apocalyptic towards the end of his life. In many ways it is quite Wagnerian, although Brahms was poles apart from Wagner.
‘It’s like a coiled spring’
The Sonata itself comes from a sort of late-19th century, music-charmer tradition, but there is something in the second movement which reminds me very much of Wagner. I think it’s got this incredible kaleidoscope of different moods and atmospheres and skills.
And as with a lot of Brahms’s piano works, it’s sort of like a coiled spring. There’s a lot going on that is ready to burst.
Barry Douglas, pianist
Top 10 Brahms works: 6 to 10
6. Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 52
The Liebeslieder Waltzes, Op. 52 are some of my favourite Brahms pieces of all. It’s Brahms unfettered by academic convention or constraints. He’s just letting his hair down. It’s the most exuberant, lyrical and smiley series of choral waltzes that you can possibly imagine.
I first heard them on a recording that my teacher Nadia Boulanger made with her star pupil Dinu Lipatti. Even though she wasn’t a great fan of Brahms, her playing with Lipatti has all the right ingredients of virtuosity and enchantment – it’s just beautiful.
They are the greatest fun to perform too. When we do them with the Monteverdi Choir, everyone is just beaming from ear to ear.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conductor
7. Horn Trio
The Horn Trio is probably the finest piece of music ever written for the French horn, in terms of the quality of the writing. Brahms innately understood what makes the horn the horn. He knew what it took to bring out the instrument’s most satisfying lyrical side, in a way that other composers before and after didn’t really get.
The slow movement is remarkable: it’s very contained, very calm, almost icy calm, until this extraordinary outburst in the last couple of lines of the movement where this huge anguish comes out, and then it goes away again. It’s extraordinary.
David Pyatt, horn player
8. Violin Sonata No. 3
I’ve played many Brahms piano works, but my favourite Brahms work is his Violin Sonata No. 3. Why? When it comes to love, we cannot explain it. But I remember when I heard it for the first time – not even all of it (it so happened that I came to the concert late).
So I was just under 13 years old when I heard Vladimir Spivakov perform this work in Yaruban in Armenia. Something struck my heart as I listened to it and I fell in love with it for the rest of my life.
Evgeny Kissin, piano
9. Cello Sonata no. 2 in F major, Op. 9
Brahms’s F major Cello Sonata is one of the first pieces I tackled as a kid. It’s so symphonic and dynamic and heroic and touching… The slow movement is one of Brahms’s finest – it’s simply structured, but he creates an incredible sound world with low writing for the piano in the left hand, the cello singing in its prime register on the A-string, and a pizzicato colour that he uses all throughout.
The piano part is hugely virtuosic and full of colour, but he keeps the cello in the right part of its range so it has a chance to come through. The whole Sonata is incredibly imaginative and daringly modern.
Paul Watkins, cellist
10. Viola Sonata No. 2
The Viola Sonata Op. 120 No. 2 in E flat major was originally a clarinet sonata but Brahms saw it and made his own little changes to allow it to be played on the viola. The instruments are practically the same register and it’s only in playing techniques that we are very different.
The last movement of the second sonata is a variations movement which I think is a perfect example of a mix of beauty, subtlety and complexity. It’s the late Brahms that I love – the mood, the slowness and the width of the space between the notes. Virtuosity has absolutely no room there, and that’s what I love about this Sonata.
Tabea Zimmermann, violist
Top 15 Brahms works: the BBC Music Magazine team add their choices
11. Symphony No. 3
Brahms’s finest symphony may not have the fireworks of, say, the Violin Concerto, but the Symphony No. 3 subtle drama and dark atmosphere are magical.
Recommended recording: Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Herbert von Karajan DG 477 7159
12. Ein Deutsches Requiem
Brahms employs full symphony orchestra and chorus for this majestic setting of passages from the Lutheran Bible, written in response to his mother’s death.
Recommended recording: Dorothea Röschmann (soprano), Thomas Quasthoff (baritone), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and Berlin Radio Choir/Simon Rattle EMI 365 3932
13. Piano Concerto No. 2
This beautiful, deeply felt concerto was written just after the Symphony No. 3. The Adagio slow movement’s use of cello as a ‘second’ solo instrument was highly innovative for its time, while the long, expansive Allegro opening movement is an emotional rollercoaster ride.
Recommended recording:
Emil Gilels (piano), Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra/Eugen Jochum
DG 447 4462
14. Intermezzi Op. 117
Brahms was a supreme pianist and his solo piano music has extraordinary range and variety. His late Intermezzi, for example, are stunningly written miniatures.
Recommended recording:
Nicholas Angelich (piano)
Virgin 379 3022
15. Violin Concerto
Full of gypsy inflections and wild virtuosity, the Violin Concerto, written in 1879 for Joseph Joachim, is one of the most greatest and most popular violin concertos in the repertoire.
Recommended recording: Nikolaj Znaider (violin), Vienna Philharmonic/Valery Gergiev RCA 88697103362