Rescheduled: First Mondays at Jordan Hall: Brahms

Due to weather, this concert has been rescheduled and will now take place on Thursday, December 12.

Here’s a secret of great artistry: no one does it alone.

This season, First Mondays explore connections and friendships between composers and musicians who inspired each other.

Join us as we celebrate 35 years of First Mondays: well-loved classics and new compositions, performed by some of the finest chamber musicians in the world, free and open to all.

Notes on the program from Artistic Director Laurence Lesser

This fall’s three concerts are a series built on the deep friendship among five great musicians: Clara and Robert Schumann, Felix Mendelssohn, Joseph Joachim, and Johannes Brahms. To varying degrees all were composers and performers.

December: Johannes Brahms

Johannes Brahms, the youngest of the five friends, was proclaimed by Schumann in an article titled “New Paths” as the composer who would lead the way into the future of music. Even before, Brahms and violinist/composer Joseph Joachim had “found one another” and their lifelong friendship was in important stimulus for each. Brahms’ piano quintet actually began as a no-piano two--cello quintet, but Clara Schumann said it needed the strength of a piano. After transcribing it for piano 4-hands, Brahms found the perfect solution—strings and piano as we know it today.