Using language to convey the magic of Brahms would be like using a wooden classroom ruler to measure the speed of light.

                                                                 Every Note Played, Lisa Genova

 

Mehta and Brahms

This past December and January, Zubin Mehta (1936-  ) returned to the Los Angeles Philharmonic to conduct a series of concerts designated ‘Mehta’s Brahms.’

Mehta, a wunderkind of 20th century classical music, received his first musical education under the guidance of his father, Mehli Mehta, a noted violinist and founder of the Bombay Symphony Orchestra. Following a brief period of pre-medical studies in Bombay, Zubin went to Vienna where he entered the conducting program at the Akademie für Musik. In 1958 he won the Liverpool International Conduction Composition and was a prize winner of the summer academy at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony. By 1961, when he was only 25, he had already conducted the Vienna, Berlin and Israel Philharmonic Orchestras. Music Director of the Montreal Philharmonic from 1961 to 1967, he assumed that position with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 1962, a post he held until 1978 when he took over as Music Director of the New York Philharmonic, one of the world’s pre-eminent orchestras. His 13-year tenure at the New York Philharmonic was the longest of that orchestra’s famed history. In 1981, he was named Director for Life by the Israel Philharmonic .

 

[A vignette about, and video of, Mehta as a young man: The Trout Quintet is the popular name for the Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, composed by Franz Schubert (1787-1828) when he was 22 years old, although not published until 1829, a year after his decidedly untimely death from what was described as typhoid fever but is believed to have been syphilis.

         In 1969, Zubin Mehta, then 33, joined with four of his closest friends, all of whom were already recognized as among the great musical talents of the 20th century – Daniel Barenboim, 27, piano, Jacqueline Du Pré, 24, cello, Itzhak Perlman, 24, violin, and Pinchas Zukerman, 21, a violinist playing the viola for this event – to perform The Trout. Mehta played the double bass, an instrument he had not played in public for almost a decade. Barenboim and Du Pré were husband and wife until her decidedly untimely death from multiple sclerosis at age 42 [her story, and that of her sister, has been beautifully told in the 1998 film, Hilary and Jackie]. The five performers met in London to rehearse and play this beautiful work to a sold-out crowd at Queen Elizabeth Hall.

         Chamber music was once defined as “music for friends” and, in a way, resembles jazz. The performers play in unison or each take a turn carrying the sound. If you want a delightful experience where you can see the joyful exuberance of youth and the glory of extraordinarily gifted and loving friends joining together to create thrilling sound, watch this video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZdXoER96is): the five of them meet in London to rehearse and then play The Trout.]

 

We attended the performance of the Brahm’s Piano Concerto No.2 in B-flat major, Op. 83, and the Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 73, in December. Mehta had hip surgery just a few weeks before and will be 83 in April. We have seen him conduct many times. He usually comes bounding on to the stage with great vigor and conducts energetically, rising on his toes and even bouncing when the music urges him to do so. This time he came on the stage in a wheelchair and seemed terribly frail; he looked as if he had lost considerable weight, his eyes were sunken, he was far grayer than before. Assisted up a ramp, he sat in a chair on the podium.

Then he waved his baton, the orchestra began and we were carried along with a marvelous concerte. The pianist was the renowned and outstanding Yefim Bronfman. The sound was of the Mehta of old. There was nothing frail about it Mehta, the conductor. It was powerful, even muscular, and exquisitely melodic. Brahms at his best.

Two weeks later, in January, we heard the Brahms’ “Double Concerto” (Piano Concerto in A minor, Op. 102, for violin, cello and orchestra) composed in 1887, when Brahms was at the peak of his composing power. Zukerman, Mehta’s long-time friend, was the violinist  and the cellist was the marvelous Amanda Forsyth.

Again, Mehta was wheeled out but this time he looked considerably stronger and more robust than at the earlier concert.

It was again Brahms at its best.

 

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

When I was in music appreciation class in the fourth grade at Public School (P.S.) #40 on 16th Street in South Brooklyn, in the late 1940s, we learned about the three Bs: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Subliminally this somehow pushed Mozart down on my list of the greatest musicians, at least for a while. This is where I first heard the Moonlight sonata of Beethoven as well as the universally recognized theme of his Symphony no. 5. I heard the Toccata and Fugue in D minorof Bach and Tchaikovsky’s March Slav, but I can’t recall what we heard of Brahms at that time.

The first Brahms piece I recall hearing – via a loudspeaker in the chess club at Brooklyn College – was the Violin Concerto in D minor, still one of the most magnificent and beautiful violin concerto  (here played by Hilary Hahn, the violinist of our time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFl9xuYP5T8). The quote from Lisa Genova at the top of this posting is certainly apropos for Brahms’ violin masterpiece.

Brahms was born in Hamburg. His father was double bassist in the Hamburg Philharmonic Society and Johannes began playing the piano in public at age seven. When he was 20, he met Robert Schumann (1820-1856), who proclaimed him a genius. After that Brahms’ career flourished, particularly after he moved to Vienna in the early 1860s. He directed the Vienna Philharmonic for three seasons after a number of other conducting positions, all the while continuing to compose. In later years he would only play or conduct his own works.

Brahms was “short and stocky … with clean-cut features, brilliant blue eyes, and his under lip pushed forward when intent in thought or at the piano … a man of few words and devoid of manners in a social sense.” In a descriptive German phase, he was called “a man of many corners.” He was often crusty and rude on many occasions, even to intimate friends, but seldom, if ever, to his friend Billroth. Brahms’ “paunchy figure, his beard, the hat in his hand, and his short-cut trousers were familiar to and regarded with affection by all.”

Brahms was stubborn and uncompromising. The great violinist Joseph Joachim wrote that Brahms had “two natures; one of essentially childlike genius … the other of demoniac cunning which, in icy blast, suddenly breaks forth in a prosaic, pedantic compulsion to dominate.” After hearing of Theodor Billroth’s complaints about him, Brahms resignedly admitted, “It is nothing new to me to be regarded by old acquaintances and friends as somewhat different from what I really am …” Once, he wrote to Billroth, “It always seems to me a bit melancholy when you write of your feelings of being lonely. I have a thorough understanding of that … For a long time – or for all time – I have been a bit of a shocking ‘outsider’ – and still am.”

Brahms never married and had a number of affairs. After Schumann died Brahms professed his love to Schumann’s widow, Clara Schumann (1819-1896), also an accomplished and highly regarded composer and renowned pianist. Although they became close friends she apparently resisted a romantic relationship with the much younger Brahms. Brahms died in 1897, with metastatic carcinoma, in the year after Clara’s and Theodor Billroth’s deaths.

 

Theodor (Christian Albert Theodor) Billroth (1829-1894)

At one time, in an age when eponyms were both employed and enjoyed and non-surgical treatment for peptic ulcers was unreliable, Theodor Billroth’s name was known to every medical student because of his innovative procedures anastomosing (connecting) the stomach to the first or second parts of the small intestine; the Billroth I and Billroth II procedures, which, at one time were carried out by every general surgeon. Now he is almost forgotten (eponyms are out of style …) except by medical historians and an occasional blogger …

When I asked my friend, Leo Gordon, outstanding surgeon, educator and humorist, if surgery residents still use the name Billroth, he responded: Yes. The problem is when I discuss these intestinal anastomoses they think I am referring to Bill Roth, the maître d’ at The Palm.

Billroth was born in Bergen auf Rügen, Prussia, the son of a pastor who died of tuberculosis when Billroth was 5. An indifferent student, he spent more time practicing the piano than studying. Acceding to his mother’s wishes he enrolled at the University of Greifswald to study medicine but gave up the whole of his first term to the study of music. However, Professor Wilhelm Baum took the young Billroth with him to Göttingen where Brahms concentrated on medical studies, completing his doctorate at the Frederick Wilhelm University of Berlin in 1852. After graduation, Billroth went with two classmates to Trieste to study the anatomy and physiology of the torpedo fish. From 1853 to 1860 he was assistant in Bernhard von Langenbeck’s (another, once-well-known eponym also gone) surgical clinic at Berlin’s great Charité hospital. In 1860, Billroth accepted the position of Chair of Clinical Surgery and director of the surgical hospital at the University of Zurich. In Zurich he met Brahms, then mostly known as a pianist and music director. About this occasion, Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann, “After the first concert in Zurich, some friends of music especially Dr. Lübke, Professor Billroth, and others, arranged a private concert on Sunday morning to hear the D Major Serenade again. They engaged an orchestra and sent many telegrams to be sure that the score would arrive and that anyone interested” could “join the audience.”

Billroth was a large man, becoming obese with the years. He had a “noble head and vivid blue eyes, his face framed by a blond beard. His gestures were emphatic, his speech eloquent. He shone in any assemblage … without the slightest effort to attract attention. He became the center of any group, social, musical, or medical, as naturally as if he was destined for that particular purpose.” His reputation grew rapidly, not least because of his infectious personality; he was loved by both undergraduates and graduate students. No one could compete with him as a surgeon. Patients and physicians from all countries came to him. His knowledge of classic literature was vast. He became one of the best-known and most loved men of Vienna.

Billroth wrote the classic textbook Die allgemeine chirurgische Pathologie und Therapie(General Surgical Pathology and Therapy), in 1863, and helped establish Zurich as one of the foremost medical institutions in Europe. He introduced the concepts of audits and the practice of publishing all results, whether good or bad. In 1867, he became professor of surgery at the University of Vienna and chief of the Second Surgical Clinic at the Allgemeine Krankenhaus (Vienna General Hospital), then one of the most important hospitals in the world. Here he established himself as a pre-eminent surgical power. He made many important surgical and medical contributions and performed the first successful gastric resection for cancer. He is regarded as the founder of the first modern school of surgical education.

 

Billroth and Brahms – a friendship forged by music.

Billroth was a talented amateur pianist and violinist, regularly playing in a Zurich string quartet. After moving to Vienna he became close friends with Brahms and they shared many musical insights. Brahms frequently sent Billroth his original manuscripts for comment before publication and Billroth participated in trial rehearsals of many of Brahms’ chamber works. Brahms’ opus 51 quartets were dedicated to Billroth.

Brahms had interests almost as consuming to him as music. He was often quite vocal about politics, especially German politics. A great admirer of Bismarck, he looked favorably on the creation of the German Empire. He was very much interested in technology and science. His library contained a number of medical books, including Billroth’s Chirurgische Briefe(Surgical Letters) and Engelmann’s Über den Einfluss des Blutes(Experiments on the Microscopic Changes in Muscle Contractions). He loved literature and was thoroughly familiar with Shakespeare’s works.

Brahms often confided in Billroth. When offered Schumann’s old position as music director in Düsseldorf, he wrote: “I don’t want to leave Vienna … My principal objects are also childish and cannot be revealed: the good taverns in Vienna, for instance, and the bad, coarse Rhineland tone (particularly in Düsseldorf). And – in Vienna one is free to remain a bachelor without provoking comment … I no longer wish to marry, and yet – I’ve reason to fear the fair sex.” Vienna had tolerated the bachelorhood of Beethoven and Shubert as well as that of Anton Bruckner, Brahms’ contemporary.

Brahms’ first trip to Italy in 1878 was with Billroth and their composer-friend Karl Goldmark. Brahms and Billroth remained friends for 30 years although, in Billroth’s last years – partly because of his illnesses but also because of the marked differences in their temperaments, their meetings became less frequent. Their correspondence did not cease, however, nor did the essentially deep affection they felt for each other.

Billroth was carrying out research to try to apply scientific methods to musicality – he authored a book “Wer ist muskialisch?” about the aesthetics of music – months before he died.

Billroth’s pupil, Mikulicz (another lost eponym … Mikulicz disease was the name given to a benign lymphoepithelial proliferation of the parotid gland), said, “I had the good fortune to know Billroth well in his home. The entire atmosphere was one of music, in which Brahms’ music played the foremost role, as was to be expected from the intimate friendship of the two. Many first performances of Brahms’ chamber music, vocal quartettes, and others, were heard here for the first time.” Mikulicz was also an accomplished pianist. He and Billroth played Brahms’ Second Symphony “for four-handed piano” from the manuscript “until we knew every note of his works. ”

In the months after Billroth’s death, when Brahms was already gravely ill with metastatic carcinoma, he made a number of visits to Billroth’s widow and children to express his high regard for Billroth. Brahms attended two concerts in the month before he died. He was unable to stay to the end of a new piece by his old friend, Johann Strauss. A week before the Strauss premier, however, Brahms was present when Hans Richter conducted the Fourth Symphony. “Audience and players rose after every movement and honored the master, gray-haired, jaundiced, and emaciated, with indescribable fervor.”

Brahms is buried in the Central Cemetery of Vienna, not far from where Billroth was interred, near the monument to Mozart and close to the graves of Beethoven and Schubert.

 

 

 

 

Additional reading:
Brahms, Johannes and Billroth, Theodor (translated and edited by Hans Barkan). Letters from a Musical Friendship. Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1957.
Claiman, Henry N. Billroth and Brahms. A musical friendship. Pharos 2003; volume 66, pages 28-33.
McDonald, Malcolm: Brahms. New York, Schirmer Books, 1990.
Musgrave, Michael: A Brahms Reader. New Haven, Yale University Press, 2000.
Roses DF. Brahms and Billroth. Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics 1986; volume 163, pages 385-398.
Rutledge, Robb H. A medical musical friendship: Billroth and Brahms. Journal of Surgical Education 2007; volume 64, pages 57-60.
Strohl, EL. The unique friendship of Theodor Billroth and Johannes Brahms. Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics 1970; volume 131, pages 757-761.
Wheeler, Malcom H. Billroth and Brahms – A Unique Friendship. Clinics in Surgery 2017; volume 2, pages 1-5.