Brahms and Nature
Writer Lesley Chamberlain investigates how Brahms was influenced by the natural world.
The Essay · BBC Radio 3
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Show Notes
Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 2 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.
Interaction with nature is one of the cornerstones of 19th-century Romantic music. Writer Lesley Chamberlain offers a chance to join Brahms for a creative ramble and sets his work in the climate of German ideas about nature.
In the German Romantic tradition Nature is Art's rival and the artist's consolation. Brahms' love of nature, which came to him in hours of shared and solitary walking, intensified the demands he made on himself as a composer.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.