Did you know❓ Romantic German composer and pianist Johannes Brahms (1833—1897) showed a great musical talent since childhood, and he first studied with his father learning to play violin, cello and piano. Since his family didn't have many financial means, from age 14 to 16 he played the piano in dance halls, taverns, brothels, inns, and along Hamburg's docks to help support them. He also started to compose his first works around this time, which he would later destroy as an adult because he found them embarrassing. The same fate was reserved to the compositions that didn't meet the high standards Brahms was known to set for himself. After Beethoven had showed the Western world his greatness through his majestic symphonies, Brahms was afraid that anything he could come up with would be underwhelming, and he worked on his 1st Symphony for over 20 years before he deemed the result acceptable. Now widely considered one of the greatest symphonies of the Austro-German tradition, it was intentionally premiered in Karlsruhe and not in Vienna in 1876 to avoid comparisons with Beethoven. The premiere went quite smoothly, but Brahms himself wasn't too satisfied and described his composition as being "long and not especially amiable". The comparisons he sought to avoid eventually emerged when the Symphony was performed in Vienna, but renowned Austrian music critic Hanslick also praised the work as “one of the most individual and magnificent of the symphonic literature.”
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