Brahms and Germany
Natasha Loges explores Brahms's complex political relationship with his homeland.
The Essay · BBC Radio 3
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Show Notes
Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 3 of 5.
Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.
Brahms lived in a time of great political change. In his late thirties he saw the birth of a unified German nation under the 'Iron Chancellor' Otto von Bismarck. The question of what this Germany was to be became one of the great issues of the day.
Writer and pianist Natasha Loges explores the nationalist elements of Brahms' music. She examines his famous feud with the more openly patriotic Richard Wagner, and the ways in which Brahms' 'German' image was manipulated in the next century by the Nazis.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.