Life & Works - Johannes Brahms

by Jeremy Siepmann, Johannes Brahms (Artist), Jasper Britton (Narrator)

Brahms is one of the best loved yet most controversial of all the Romantics. Almost uniquely, his works have never suffered the slightest period of eclipse. Profoundly emotional yet governed by an iron discipline, the music, like the man, is a fascinating, entertaining, often deeply moving blend of opposites. He had a gift for friendship and a capacity for love far beyond the ordinary, yet no man could be ruder or more hurtful. Though humble, he was consumed by a sense of destiny, and his inner life, colored by his adoration and fear of women, found expression in some of the greatest music ever written.

Listening to this audio-biography is leaping inside the life and times of a great German Romantic, understanding the man who was haunted by the ghost of Beethoven for years and was 43 before he wrote his first symphony.

Audible Audio

Published November 12, 2012

About the author

Jeremy Siepmann (16 January 1942 – 6 April 2016), born in America and living in Britain for most of his career, was a broadcaster and writer on music.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is one particular genre of books that lends itself naturally to the audiobobook format, and that is books about musicians. I realized this a couple of years ago when I listened to "Miracle and Wonder", which includes Paul Simon picking up a guitar and singing (flawlessly, by the way) excerpts from several of his songs. This audiobook, "Johannes Brahms", from the Life and Works series by writer and narrator Jeremy Siepmann, is another example of the optimal use of the format.

Full disclosure: I had started reading an ebook from Libby about Johannes Brahms ("Johannes Brahms: A Biography" by Jan Swafford), but then I had eye surgery to repair a detached retina and had to stay in for a week with no reading or keyboard playing allowed. That put me a week behind with rehearsals for "Young Frankenstein" at our community theatre, which opens next Thursday. Anyway, I also got behind on my reading, and Libby pulled the book. That's how I ended up with the Audible version.

The book is 4 hours and 59 minutes, which is not very long for an audiobook, and I'd say about an hour and a half of it is music. In this case it was perfectly appropriate, and in fact quite helpful. I learned many, many things about Brahms, one of my favorite composers. (During the pandemic, I wrote a series of short articles about my favorite composers. Here is the link to the one about Brahms: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vGMRLXi4HsfEgMJiZ9Ck6nMGsPl_U8Bw/view?usp=sharing.)

If you have read my "reviews", you know I don't list a bunch of spoilers, but I can't resist sharing the author's description of Brahms's appearance in later life, after he had grown the long beard that you see in so many pictures: he looked like "a cross between a shabby Santa Claus and a target of the Salvation Army". I think you'll find many interesting things about him, especially where he got experience playing piano as a teenager, and his relationship with Clara Schumann, the composer Robert Schumann's widow.

Five hours makes for a comparatively short audiobook, so if you are a fan of that format, you will find that the time goes by quickly. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I have to give it all five stars.