Learn to play piano with Brahms and Tchaikovsky
We celebrate the shared birthday of two of the best-known composers of the Romantic era
Today marks the shared birthday of two of history’s best known and most performed composers: Johannes Brahms and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (who would have been 192 and 185 years old respectively).
Brahms, born into relative poverty in Hamburg, took to composing and conducting at a young age. He’s said to have played piano in local bars for sailors as a boy to help make ends meet for his family, and while this appears to have been quite a traumatic experience, the went on to play professionally as a young man, touring around Central Europe. Much of his prolific output was widely celebrated at the time, and is now considered among the defining works of the mid-Romantic period.
Tchaikovsky, born seven years later in Votkinsk, Russia, faced adversity in his own way despite being born into a far wealthier family. He demonstrated exceptional musical talent as a boy but initially trained as a civil servant, due to the limited opportunities to pursue a musical career in Russia at the time. He eventually did attend Saint Petersburg Conservatory and went on to achieve a comparable level of success to Brahms, composing, among works in many other styles, the two ballets for which he is best-known today, Swan Lake and The Nutcracker.
While Brahms can be said to have innovated in many ways, particularly with his approach to incorporating dissonance, he drew heavily from traditional Western structures and techniques. The younger Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, blended Western and Russian influences to create his own style — one that was not always fully accepted in Russia or in Europe. Despite this, he is widely regarded as the first Russian composer to achieve significant success in the West.
As two of the preeminent European composers of the time, it stands to reason that Brahms and Tchaikovsky would eventually cross paths, and indeed they did on at least two occasions, first in Leipzig where Brahms was rehearsing in 1886, and then later in Hamburg as Tchaikovsky was preparing for his own concert.
Tchaikovsky, as evidenced by his own writing and reports from others at the time, had been no fan of Brahms prior to this first meeting. The German composer’s fame preceded him, with many at the time comparing him to both Bach and Beethoven, both already considered greats. For Tchaikovsky though, the music of Brahms lacked melody, inventiveness, and ultimately beauty. The former considered the latter so over-rated, in fact that he had variously pronounced him a “scoundrel” and a “mediocre composer” in his diaries.
It seems that Brahms was somewhat aware of Tchaikovsky’s distaste for his work ahead of their first meeting in Leipzig. When Tchaikovsky appeared to sit in on Brahms’s rehearsal and asked politely if he would be disturbed, Brahms replied “Not in the least, but why are you going to hear this? It is not at all interesting.”
Despite an awkward first encounter, the pair went out for drinks following the rehearsal, together with a group that included Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. If Tchaikovsky had remained unimpressed by what he heard (and by all accounts he had), he seemed to be altogether more taken with Brahms as a personality. In a later letter, Tchaikovsky revealed that he had found Brahms to be a “frightful tippler” and confessed that they had embarked on a “drinking binge” that evening. He didn’t seem to mind — the next time the pair met they did it all over again, with Tchaikovsky remarking in another letter that Brahms was “not at all as proud as I had imagined.”
It seems that, while Tchaikovsky found Brahms to be an amicable drinking partner, he did not significantly change his views on the German’s music, despite studying it in more depth in later years. We don’t have much direct evidence of Brahms’s feelings about Tchaikovsky’s music, at the time, though Tchaikovsky himself noted that Brahms was critical of certain sections of his Suite No. 1.
The pair’s Hamburg meeting in 1889 likely gives us our best insights into the two composers’ true feelings about each other. Upon arriving in the city, Tchaikovsky found that he was staying in the same hotel as Brahms, who had extended his stay in order to attend a rehearsal of the Russian’s symphony a few days later.
Following the rehearsal, Brahms invited Tchaikovsky for lunch which, once again, descended into a drinking session. It’s here, Tchaikovsky reports, that the two had a frank discussion about their thoughts on one another’s music. Brahms confessed that he had not enjoyed the symphony at all, and, rather than take offence, Tchaikovsky had been rather impressed by the frank criticism. In turn, Tchaikovsky offered his own critique of Brahms’s work, which was received with similar grace.
This lunch was to be the final time the two composers met, but it’s said that they parted as firm friends, with Tchaikovsky speaking and writing fondly of Brahms in the years to come.
Learn to play piano with Brahms and Tchaikovsky
If Brahms and Tchaikovsky’s tale of rivalry and eventual friendship shows us anything it’s that even the great composers were human too. Here at ROLI, we believe there’s music in everyone — it’s just a matter of freeing it. With the ROLI Learn app, you get access to some of the best-loved pieces from these famous frenemies, together with more than a thousand other classical and contemporary hits.
Brahms
Lullaby
Don’t let this one send you to sleep. Brahms’s “Wiegenlied”, literally “Cradle Song”, is the first entry on our list, and more than likely the first one any of us heard. Composed in 1868 as a gift for a friend who had recently given birth, this soothing tune has, by design, been helping babies to sleep ever since.
There’s a little more to it though: Brahms and the friend, Bertha Faber, had once been an item, and, during long walks in the German countryside, the latter had often sang the then-popular folk tune “S’is Anderscht” (“It’s Different”), which became the couple’s song. Despite the fact Faber was married at the time, the melody from “S’is Anderscht” is hidden in “Wiegenlied” as a countermelody.
Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77
Another piece written for a friend, Brahms’ only violin concerto was composed in 1878 for his violinist friend Joseph Joachim. Brahms himself was reported not to be overly proud of this concerto, but it has since become one of his most popular works. Scored for solo violin and orchestra, this makes a great test not only of two-handed playing (with ROLI Piano or two Piano Ms) but also of right-hand dexterity, owing to the fast-flowing, lyrical nature of the violin melodies.
If this one seems oddly familiar, you may be a cinema fan or have a soft spot for early-2000s pop music. Paul Thomas Anderson used it for the end credits of There Will Be Blood and a sample of the opening violin phrases is used prominently in Alicia Keys’s 2004 song “Karma”.
Hungarian Dance No. 5
Inspired by a chance meeting with Hungarian Gypsy violinist Eduard Remenyi, Brahms wrote his collection of 21 Hungarian Dances for piano, later orchestrating several of his favourites. The fifth of these is another piece you may well have come across while watching a film, TV show, or advert — it was most famously used as a soundtrack to barber Charlie Chaplin shaving a customer in time with the music in The Great Dictator.
Interestingly, Brahms appears to have based the fifth dance, accidentally, on a piece by Hungarian composer Béla Kéler, who was still alive at the time the collection was published. He had heard "Bártfai emlék" (“Memories of Bártfa”) and mistakenly thought that it was a traditional Hungarian folk song.
Tchaikovsky
The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a
Tchaikovsky’s 1892 ballet, The Nutcracker, now a beloved Christmas tradition across much of the world, wasn’t initially a hit. Reviews of early performances were mixed at best, and it wasn’t until Walt Disney used some of the pieces for Fantasia and George Balanchine’s production was televised in the 1950s that it began to be regarded as the classic we know it as today.
What was an instant success, however, was The Nutcracker Suite, a cut-down selection of music that Tchaikovsky debuted as a concert several months before the ballet itself. The suite consists of eight of the now best-known pieces, all of which are available to play in the ROLI learn app:
The Nutcracker VIII: Waltz of the Flowers
The Nutcracker VII: Reed Flutes
The Nutcracker VI: Chinese Dance
The Nutcracker V: Arabian Dance
The Nutcracker IV: Trepak
The Nutcracker III: Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy
The Nutcracker II: March
The Nutcracker I: Overture Miniature
1812 Overture
It’s easy to take modern production techniques for granted. With the advent of technologies like digital recording, sampling, and the internet, music makers have near-instant access to just about any sound imaginable. Want to use a rare instrument from a different part of the world? You can! Add some nature recordings to your ambient track? No problem. Sample a snippet of Tchaikovsky? Easy.
But if you actually were Tchaikovsky, you’d either have to use the real thing or just do without. For his 1880 commemoration of the Russian victory over the invading Napoleon in 1812, he chose the former. The 1812 overture is scored for brass, woodwind, percussion (including a bell tower), strings, and artillery — one battery of cannons to be precise. This piece ends with a bang.
Swan Lake Act 2 No. 14: Moderato
Like The Nutcracker, Swan Lake was initially met with muted reception. Nevertheless, the story of Princess Odette, turned into a swan by an evil curse, went on to become the most widely-performed ballet of all time. The piece available in the ROLI Learn app is from Act 2, which may be the most famous scene in all of Ballet. It involves Odette turning back into a human just at the moment she’s about to be shot with a crossbow by the hunter, Siegfried.
This particular piece of music, to be performed at “moderate” tempo accompanies the transformation itself. It contains the well-known “swan theme” melody that reoccurs at several key moments throughout the ballet.
Album for the Young Op.39, No.3 Mama
Brahms was not the only German composer who had an effect on Tchaikovsky. He was altogether more complimentary about Robert Schumann, and spoke often about his influence. Tchaikovsky never met Schumann, but is thought to have once been introduced to his widow, pianist and composer Clara Schumann.
Tchaikovsky’s Album for the Young is a series of compositions for children to play, inspired by the one Schumann had created for his three daughters in 1848 (Tchaikovsky’s series was dedicated to his favourite nephew, Vladimir “Bob” Davydov). Despite each piece being relatively simple, there are plenty of interesting ideas on display — including incorporations of several popular folk tunes from around Europe — making the Album an ideal collection for beginner pianists of all ages.