Carnegie Hall

Unlike his slightly younger contemporaries Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) never made it to Carnegie Hall. Legend has it that Brahms was asked to participate in the Hall’s Opening Week Music Festival in May 1891—a celebrity role that was ultimately filled by Tchaikovsky—but he declined, perhaps because he rarely traveled or because he might have heard that Tchaikovsky (whose music he didn’t care for) was being considered as well. Sadly, proof of this historic near miss has always remained tantalizingly out of reach.

Nevertheless, Brahms’s music did make it to Carnegie Hall, even beating out Tchaikovsky’s: On April 1, 1891, pianist Franz Rummel played Brahms’s Capriccio in B Minor, Op. 76, No. 2, in the basement Recital Hall (the future Zankel Hall) as part of the very first recital ever performed on the premises—one month before the Hall’s official Opening Night on May 5.

Many of Brahms’s orchestral works were heard at Carnegie Hall before the turn of the 20th century; in fact, Brahms was among the 10 most-performed composers at the Hall during its first two decades. Nevertheless, although Brahms was recognized as a master composer well before his death—and despite more than 200 performances of his works at Carnegie Hall between 1891 and 1900—his music seemed slow to catch on with New York audiences and critics. As late as 1916, for example, at least one music critic labeled Brahms a “neglected” composer. Some of Brahms’s important choral and orchestral works received their Carnegie Hall premieres as follows:

• The composer’s only Violin Concerto received its Carnegie Hall premiere on November 13, 1891, with Adolph Brodsky as soloist and Walter Damrosch leading the New York Symphony Orchestra.
• The Oratorio Society of New York gave the Carnegie Hall premiere of Ein deutsches Requiem on November 27, 1891, again with Damrosch conducting.
•  The First and Second symphonies were first performed at Carnegie Hall in 1893 (on November 10 and February 3, respectively), with Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra.
• The First Piano Concerto, completed in 1859, had to wait until 1906 for its Carnegie Hall premiere, which took place on March 4 with pianist Rafael Joseffy and Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra.