In 1958, the French writer Françoise Sagan published a romance novel, Do You Like Brahms? When the heroine, Bao Er, was 17 years old, someone asked her: "Do you like Brahms?" The rest of the novel, however, seems to have lost contact with Brahms.
People are keen to talk about Brahms and Schumann Clara's relationship, but beyond that, who is Brahms? How to understand his music? Recently, the Shanghai Conservatory of Music Han Quartet, together with Lan Hancheng, a professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and viola player, held a "String 'Dance' Brahms" concert at the Shanghai Concert Hall. Before the performance, Lan Hancheng and Wu Shuting, the second violin of the Han Quartet, and Gu Chao, a music critic, chatted about the Brahms in their eyes.
The scene of the performance
When she was studying at Shangyin Annex, a friend of Wu Shuting bluntly said that "Brahms can't listen to it" because his music has many levels, "It is difficult for you to say clearly whether this movement is melancholy, sad or unhappy." ”
When Lan Han became a teenager, he also felt that Brahms was obscure. When he was 14 years old, an English pianist told him during his lesson that Brahms was about two hundred pounds and had a long beard. This image appeared in his mind, and Lan Hancheng felt as if he was a little closer to Brahms.
Gu Chao found that although Brahms in his later years was a "big fat man" and "big beard", his works were lighter and gentler than when he was young. The concert's Performance of the Second String Quintet in G major is an important work of Brahms in his later years. Although the composer felt that "time was running out", the decadence could not be heard in the music, and the rhythm of "Vienna Round Dance" ran through the whole process, elegant and enthusiastic. Brahms's biographer, Carlbeck, believes that the work depicts Vienna's Prater Park, where Brahms often wandered in his later years.
Co-branded ticket holders
At the concert, the Han Quartet also premiered a string quintet by commissioned composer Yuval Gottilpovich based on Brahms's Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major. In this work, Brahms incorporated his song "Song of Raindrops" into the third movement, the original poem was composed by Grote, with lyrics to the effect: "The sound of the rain is pouring, recalling my old songs." Whenever it rains outside the house, we sing this song together in front of the door, can we hear this song again, accompanied by the same rain sound. In my pure childhood, it had moistened my heart. ”
Founded in 2009, the Han Quartet is the successor to the Chamber Music Tradition of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, after the Shanghai Women's Quartet and the Shanghai Quartet, and the famous founder of the Alban Berger Quartet, Hato Berle, who described them as "the leaders of the Chinese string quartet".
What is the true meaning of chamber music art? It's cooperation. At the concert scene, the five musicians are related to each other like "five elements", forming an unbreakable formation, from the rhythm pitch to the musical expression, they can all be "together".
Brahms's chamber music works have a distinctive feature – each instrument is the protagonist. Wu Shuting pointed out that during the Renaissance and Baroque periods, singers have always been the protagonists, instrumental performances are supporting roles, and the string quartet at that time also used the first violin as the protagonist, and the rest as a foil. Later, Haydn, the "father of the string quartet", broke this rule and proposed the "principle of dialogue", which Beethoven developed to the peak, and Brahms also inherited this. In Wu Shuting's view, Brahms lived in an era of the best chamber music atmosphere, and Brahms was a true intellectual, and his works pursued the exchange of hearts.
Brahms was born in Hamburg, Germany, a sister city of Shanghai. With the theme of "Pride of Hamburg", the concert and Hamburg jointly launched a joint commemorative ticket holder to remember the promotion of Sino-German cultural exchanges by this performance, looking forward to the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany and the 5th anniversary of the opening of the Elbphilharmonie Hall in 2022.