Updates, Live: Brahms: The Double Concerto

Johannes Brahms
(http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/5783.html)
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Brahms approached the project with anxiety over writing for instruments that were not his own. He wrote the Double Concerto for Robert Hausmann (a notable 19th century German cellist who premiered important works by Brahms and Max Bruch), and his old friend Joseph Joachim (one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century). The Double Concerto was, in part, a gesture of reconciliation towards Joachim, after their long friendship had ruptured following Joachim's divorce from his wife Amalie (Brahms had sided with Amalie in the dispute). And, speaking of Joachim, the Double Concerto makes use of the musical motif A-E-F, a permutation of F-A-E, which stood for a personal motto of Joachim, Frei Aber Einsam (free but lonely) - thirty-four years earlier, Brahms had been involved in a collaborative work using the F-A-E motif in tribute to Joachim: the F-A-E Sonata of 1853. Now, a bit of scholarly discussion: Richard Cohn has included the first movement of this concerto in his discussions of triadic progressions from a neo-Riemannian perspective. Does it sound familiar to you? Well, Cohn analyzed such progressions mathematically: he notes several progressions that divide the octave equally into three parts, and which can be analyzed using the triadic transformations proposed by Hugo Riemann (not to be confused with Bernhard Riemann). Good to know!

(wiki)

Now, speaking a little bit about the triadic progression and the neo_Riemannian theory: it tries to describe some structures identified in the works of Wagner, Liszt, Bruckner, also of Mozart, Schubert, and, as we can see, Brahms - music that is triadic but not altogether tonally unified. Okay, I know it sounds too dry: it is about mathematical transformations that describe the shift between related major and minor harmonies not necessarily based on a tonic, as found especially at the Late Romanticist composers.I would stop here, as it becomes too specious.