'Exactement, mon ami,' Poirot would say, 'doze composeurs verre very strange, n'est-ce-pas?'. Really, music is the thing, and we the listeners have exactly the same amount of competence to say what is good or bad as those composers of yore. They were just people like we are, in that respect.

__________________
''Oh, the String Quartet - oh, the Divine Scratching!''

Page fifteen of the book Elgar Studies. The passages mentioned are from The Apostles:

"The parallels of harmonic technique and expressive import in the three passages place Elgar firmly in the orbit of the Wagnerian and post-Wagnerian musical worlds."

Elgar almost quotes a passage near the end of the Tristan prelude in his second symphony and parallels have been pointed out between the famous melody which opens Elgar's first symphony and the opening melody of Parsifal. Incidentally, following this very expansive melody (rather unBrahmsian I would say: Brahms is altogether tighter) in A flat the music abruptly heads into a theme in D minor; the (tri-)tonal rupture this causes in the structure of the music is something Brahms would never try; curiously enough, it is a Mahlerian idea, and whilst Wagner too hadn't tried it, the idea of tonal ambiguity nonetheless places Elgar within the same ball park as Wagner.

I would list Brahms as my favorite composer at the moment. The Brahms Double (Op. 102) is stunning to me. I keep listening to it performed by so many greats. Of course my favorite is only the one I've seen live, though twice, with Janine Jansen and Alisa Weilerstein and the BSO conducted by Hans Graf. I also saw the BSO recently do Symphony No. 4. Since then I've been trying to listen to everything I can that Brahms wrote. Of course, playing Brahms is another matter. Some friends of mine and I tried to get through a Brahms piano trio with limited success, and while the orchestral violin parts are not so bad, the solo part for the double is quite challenging.

Yes, that's it. You will never regret this purchase.

Wau, did you see and hear Nicholas Angelich? He is one of the best living Brahms pianist.

I am not musician and I get him.

Am I the only one who hears Beethoven's Ode to Joy in the last movement of Brahms 1st symphony?

no, jeder Esel can see that..

This is mentioned since the première of the symphony. This is one of the reasons it got the nick "Beethoven's tenth".

mine was funnier.

I never saw the reason why it did. Sure, it does have some minor similarities, but all in all, it is Brahms's first, not Beethoven's tenth.

Not really; I'm more apt to hear the finale of Brahms' first in the opening of Mahler's third... still, point taken.

And still it's Brahms' first symphony.

What did he do? I didn't hear that. I read somewhere that once he met Bruckner and told him: “You are the greatest symphonist since Beethoven.” (I strongly disagree with him.) Now he couldn’t say that out of politeness since Brahms was notoriously uncouth and managed to insult almost everybody. (Suk dedicated a work to him; Brahms said: “Of course, you can not dedicate to me something like Beethoven’s Fifth symphony.”) He was filled with admiration for Beethoven and … Johann Strauss. Of himself he thought that his importance in the history of music would be like Cherubini’s. I wonder if he liked his own works. I do. I mean, about 25 of them, which is a lot.

I have been a big "brahmin" for nearly 50 years. I have on LPs and/or on CDs practically everything he wrote and didn't destroy, a lot of his works in several interpretations, about a dozen of them even in his own transcription for four-hand-piano (maybe it sounds strange but I like some of them very much in this unfamiliar version too, first of all the two quartets of Op. 51, the 2d and 3d symphony… And the Concerto in D Minor, but that is less surprising. You can buy them on the cheap on Naxos CDs). But I am not uncritical at that. For example I find both String quintets and both String sextets boring; the two Sonatas for Viola or his very last Opus, the 11 Choral Preludes, are not fantastic either…

Actually he [Brahms] said "Ochs" (but I am not sure; are you sure that he said "Esel"?). (Well, I know that in this matter these two animals are one single species.)

I'm late to this Brahms party but just this past week I've discovered his chamber works. I especially enjoy the clarinet pieces, the sonatas and quintet. I was also pleasantly surprised how much I enjoyed his solo piano work. His symphonies and concertos are some of the works that got me into classical music; I can't believe it took me this long to stumble on these chamber treasures. These are all from the DG complete set which I got over the summer.

I see that I have previously commented on Brahms as a composer in this thread. That was in regard to his alleged failure to innovate.

Regarding his chamber works, I think that for many people chamber music may be one of the last genres they get into, if at all. I know I shouldn't generalise but from my experience and some friends' it took a few years to say that I began to really chamber music. At the start I was more into Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak. It took a while longer to get into Brahms chamber music.

The first piece of Brahms chamber mfollwed closely by the Piano Quintet. In my estimation the Piano Quintet is one of Brahms best works. It's quite amazing how some of the versions vary, and how poor some are in relation to the best. My favourite by far among several I have is by Alfredo Perl (piano) who weaves such gorgeous textures. The Piano Quartet No 1 is another favourite, and the version I like most is with Rubinstein. The Horn Trio (Op 40) is also very good. I like the Florestan Trio performing this work. There's so much more wonderful material.

As an aside, Schumann's chamber music is definitely worth exploring by anyone who has recently "discovered" Brahms chamber music and skipped over Schumann. Brahms chamber style is quite similar to Schumann's, and there are some jewels among the latter, not least the Piano Quintet (Op 44, try the Andsnes version).