Status Updates From Great Masters: Brahms- His ...

"Brahms, who grew up in genuine poverty, had a natural and
understandable aversion to the posturing and aristocratic
pretensions (like those demonstrated by Liszt) that were the
essence of the Romantic era’s elevation of the performing
artist to the level of a hero."

"By 1860, at the age of twenty-seven, Brahms’s mature compositional
priorities and aesthetic were firmly in place. He would remain, until the
end of his life, a wonderful combination of head and heart.
(...) the “heart” part of Brahms’s language, the intuitive, inspiration-driven, subjective aspect of his compositional style."

Diary entry by Robert Schumann: "Visit from Brahms. A Genius."

Clara wrote in her journal: "Here again is one who comes as if sent from God. He played us sonatas and scherzos of his own. All of them rich in fantasy, depth of feeling and mastery of form. Robert could see no reason in to suggest any changes." (Brahms was about 19 or 20 years old.)

Brahms finished playing. Robert and Clara said nothing. Finally, Robert got up, patted Brahms on the shoulder, and said, “You and I understand each other.” Not surprisingly, Brahms didn’t know what Robert was talking
about. He was invited to lunch the following day and ushered out
of the house. Brahms thought he’d made a bad impression. Of course, the
opposite was true. He had rendered the Schumanns speechless.

Lecture Three: The Schumanns :)

Unfortunately, Brahms did not like Liszt. He was disgusted with the scene in Weimar, the ostentatiousness; the obsequious, backbiting acolytes; Liszt’s faux-regal manner (...)

Still Brahms said: "Whoever has not heard Liszt, cannot even speak of piano playing."

What they had in common - in my opinion - is that they were both generous musicians and people. I have also listened to Greenberg's lecture on Liszt.

"The great man himself (Liszt) asked Brahms to play; Brahms,
paralyzed, as anyone would be under such circumstances,
declined. Liszt picked up Brahms’s barely legible manuscript of the
Scherzo in Eb Major and played it perfectly, providing a
running commentary while he did so. Liszt liked it, and he
seemed to like Brahms."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uka3r...

(Brahms, Scherzo in E-flat minor Op.4)

When Brahms played this composition, Joachim was
stunned. Brahms met Joachim when he was 19.
Fifty years later, Joachim recalled, “Never in the course of my
artist’s life had I been more completely overwhelmed."

"One of the disturbing formative experiences of Brahms’s
childhood was his employment as a piano player in the bars and
brothels of Hamburg. What he saw in these establishments added
to his conflicted personality and left him unable to sustain
meaningful relationships with women. When he was fourteen, he
stopped playing the piano in brothels and began giving lessons."

His mother Johanna married his father Johann Jakob when she was 41 years old. Johannes had two siblings. His mother was 44 years of age when Johannes was born. And his younger brother Fritz was born when she was 46 years old and Elise was born when their mother was about 42.

When he was staying in hotels, Brahms would purposely go about in stocking feet, so as not to disturb the servants.

On one night of a concert tour in Hungary with Brahms and the violinist Joseph Joachim, the audience had only a solitary member. Joachim wanted to refund him the price of his ticket, but Brahms insisted on playing the concert. They also were taking requests for songs.

"Brahms was an inveterate friend to the working people he
came in contact with. Unlike his musical idol, Ludwig van
Beethoven, who went through legions of domestic help,
Brahms’s domestics were ferociously loyal and stayed with
him for years."

"Of course, the true Brahms, the passionate, earthy, delicate,
sentimental, and profoundly human Brahms, comes out in his
music."

"Of course, the true Brahms, the passionate, earthy, delicate,
sentimental, and profoundly human Brahms, comes out in his
music."

"Almost everyone who knew Brahms agreed that underneath
his prickly exterior, he had a heart of gold."