Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester

‘My Ninth Symphony should sound like this movement!’ - Johannes Brahms is said to have commented on the Largo movement of Joseph Haydn's Symphony No. 88. Brahms was a great admirer of the ‘father of Viennese Classicism’, whose compositions he studied intensively throughout his life. Composed between the ‘Paris’ and ‘London’ symphonies, the 88th Symphony has a special place in Haydn's oeuvre. It stands out due to its wide stylistic range, which extends from the sonorously touching Largo movement to the burlesque character of the finale.
Brahms' own orchestral works were strongly influenced by Haydn's symphonies, especially the early orchestral serenades, in which the composer made his first independent attempts at a new symphonic style.
The young Richard Strauss was no less influenced by his role model Johannes Brahms. With his early one-movement piano concerto, he also took his first steps in a very unique direction. He did not call the work a ‘piano concerto’, but initially a ‘scherzo’ and finally a ‘burlesque’. The echoes of Brahms, whom the young Strauss got to know personally during the composition period, are clearly audible - and yet much that is his own can already be heard, such as the original instrumentation idea of having the main theme performed by the timpani.
(Frankfurter Museums-Gesellschaft e.V.)