The son of a double bassist from Hamburg, who, aware of his son’s musical abilities, initiates him into music before entrusting him to a well known piano and composition teacher called Eduard Marxsen.

The young Brahms plays in taverns before giving his first concert, at the age of 15. In 1853, he meets a lot of famous musicians, namely the Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi with whom he goes on tour, the celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim, and above all Schumann, who is very enthusiastic about his early compositions and sings his praises.

The first piano concerto, created in 1859 by Brahms while in Hanover, marks the beginning of a brilliant career, essentially Viennese, entirely dedicated to composition: four symphonies and as many concertos, pages of scores for choir and orchestra, of which one of his masterpieces, the German Requiem, about 50 pieces for piano at 24 pieces of chamber music.

Brahms’ music moves away from Romantic ideas and aesthetic disparities of the times. It provoked muchcriticism at the time, Tchaikovsky claiming it was cold and dry, of poor quality for Edouard Lalo, devoid of any themes according to Bruckner, despairing for Hugo Wolf, all signs of Brahms’ melancholy according to Nietzsche. Championed by Schoenberg, for whom “Brahms, the classicist, the academic, helped people discover the language of music”.

Classical because of the rigours of form and a science of counterpoint and polyphony inherited from the ancient masters, romantic without sentimental hypertrophy, his music exploits and amplifies classical material, as much with melody as with rhythm. His areas of predilection are the piano, the “lied” and chamber music.