Bartók's large-scale orchestral works were still in the style of Johannes Brahms and Richard Strauss, but he wrote a number of small piano pieces which showed his growing interest in folk music.

Johannes Brahms, whose father was a double bass player, wrote many difficult and prominent parts for the double bass in his symphonies.

Later that year, the British composer Hubert Parry, who considered Brahms the greatest artist of the time, wrote an orchestral Elegy for Brahms.

Brahms wrote a number of major works for orchestra, including two serenades, four symphonies, two piano concertos ( No. 1 in D minor ; No. 2 in B-flat major ), a Violin Concerto, a Double Concerto for violin and cello, and two companion orchestral overtures, the Academic Festival Overture and the Tragic Overture.

Brahms was a significant lieder composer, who wrote over 200 songs.

Brahms strongly preferred writing absolute music that does not refer to an explicit scene or narrative, and he never wrote an opera or a symphonic poem.

Brahms wrote settings for piano and voice of 144 German folk songs, and many of his lieder reflect folk themes or depict scenes of rural life.

In 1933, Schoenberg wrote an essay " Brahms the Progressive " ( re-written 1947 ), which drew attention to Brahms's fondness for motivic saturation and irregularities of rhythm and phrase ; in his last book ( Structural Functions of Harmony, 1948 ), he analysed Brahms's " enriched harmony " and exploration of remote tonal regions.

His pupil Gustav Jenner wrote, " Brahms has acquired, not without reason, the reputation for being a grump, even though few could also be as lovable as he.

An old anecdote recounts that when Strauss's wife Adele asked Brahms to autograph her fan, he wrote the first few notes of the " Blue Danube " waltz, and then wrote the words " Unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms!

Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as such is often referred to as " the father of film music ".

Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Boris Blacher, Andrew Lloyd Webber, George Rochberg and Witold Lutosławski, among others, wrote well-known variations on these themes.

From his earliest works, Brahms wrote music that prominently featured the viola.

Brahms also wrote ' Two Songs for Alto with Viola and Piano ', Op.

Johannes Brahms wrote his Academic Festival Overture to thank the university for an honorary doctorate awarded in 1881.

Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Brahms also wrote secular cantatas, the best known of which are Brahms's Schicksalslied and Nänie.

Mendelssohn and Brahms also wrote significant a cappella motets.

In the same year Brahms wrote his violin concerto for the virtuoso Joseph Joachim.

Beethoven contributed to the repertoire with a Triple Concerto for piano, violin, cello and orchestra while later in the century, Brahms wrote a Double Concerto for violin, cello and orchestra.

Brahms, however, inscribed a few measures from the " Blue Danube ", and then wrote beneath it: " Unfortunately, NOT by Johannes Brahms.

After Schumann's attempted suicide and subsequent confinement in a mental sanatorium near Bonn in February 1854, Brahms was the main intercessor between Clara and her husband, and found himself virtually head of the household.

The question of Brahms and Clara Schumann is perhaps the most mysterious in music history, alongside that of Beethoven's " Immortal Beloved ".

In the Brahms camp were his close friends: Clara Schumann, the influential music critic Eduard Hanslick, and the leading Viennese surgeon Theodor Billroth.

Johannes Brahms was persuaded by Clara Schumann to rework a sonata for two pianos as a piano quintet.

Among the composers who set his poetry to music are Schubert, Robert and Clara Schumann, Brahms, Josef Rheinberger, Mahler ( song cycles Kindertotenlieder, Rückert-Lieder ), Max Reger, Richard Strauss, Zemlinsky, Hindemith, Bartók, Berg, Hugo Wolf and Heinrich Kaspar Schmid.

On radio, Sessions guested in December 1997 on the regular BBC Radio 3 show Private Passions, presented by Michael Berkeley, not as himself but as a 112-year-old Viennese percussionist called Manfred Sturmer, who told anecdotes ( about Brahms, Clara Schumann, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and others ) so realistically that some listeners did not realise that the whole thing was a hoax.

In 1852 he moved to Hanover, at the same time dissociating himself from the musical ideals of the ' New German School ' ( Liszt, Richard Wagner, Hector Berlioz, and their followers, as defined by journalist Franz Brendel ) and instead making common cause with Robert Schumann, Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms.

During this time, he frequently performed with Clara Schumann and with Brahms, both in private and in public.

Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt gave concerts there.

He attended many musical evenings at the Wittgenstein home with such Viennese musicians of the day as Johannes Brahms, Clara Schumann, Gustav Mahler, Bruno Walter, and Richard Strauss.

Composers who have written alternative cadenzas for the first movement include Harold Bauer, Amy Beach, Johannes Brahms, Carl Czerny, Gabriel Fauré, Adolf von Henselt, Mischa Levitzki, Franz Liszt, Freidrich Mockwitz ( Lost ), Ignaz Moscheles, Carl Reinecke, Ferdinand Ries ( Lost ), Clara Schumann, Gino Tagliapietra, Anton Rubinstein and Charles-Valentin Alkan.

Famous composers who wrote cadenzas for this popular concerto include Beethoven ( WoO 58 ), Charles-Valentin Alkan, Johannes Brahms ( WoO 16 ), Johann Nepomuk Hummel, Feruccio Busoni and Clara Schumann.

In December 1997, one of his guests was a 112-year-old Viennese percussionist called Manfred Sturmer, who told anecdotes about Brahms, Clara Schumann, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg and others so realistically that some listeners did not realise that the whole thing was a hoax perpetrated by Berkeley and John Sessions.

The conservative circle, based in Berlin and Leipzig, centered around Johannes Brahms and Clara Schumann, and the Leipzig Conservatoire which had been founded by Felix Mendelssohn.

Clara Schumann, Joseph Joachim and Johannes Brahms were early key members of a conservative Leipzig-based group of musicians.

The series included works from Brahms, Chopin, Dvořák, Fauré, Franck, Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Clara and Robert Schumann, Scriabin and Tchaikovsky, which she discussed before the performances with great engagement.

Ruth Laredo also recorded more than 20 albums featuring works of other composers, among them Isaac Albéniz, Bach, Beethoven, Lili Boulanger, Brahms, Chopin, Falla, Debussy, Khachaturian, Fauré, Mozart, Poulenc, Ravel, Clara and Robert Schumann, Tchaikovsky as well as of the American composers Barber, Aaron Copland, Ives, Laderman, Kirchner, Rorem and Siegmeister.

* Mendelssohn / Robert Schumann / Clara Schumann / Brahms.

Various albums on EMI with songs by Robert Schumann ( Frauenliebe und-leben ), Clara Schumann ( Drei Lieder nach Friedrich Rückert ), Brahms, Wolf ( Mignon Lieder ), Strauss ( Brentano Lieder, Ophelia Lieder ), Pfitzner and Schubert.

Johannes Brahms, in a letter to Clara Schumann, said about the ciaccona:

However, Brahms ' horn theme, with the " fate " rhythm, was noted in a letter to Clara Schumann ( dated 1868 ), overheard in an alphorn's playing.

An entry in Clara Schumann's diary about the Handel Variations gives an idea of how close the relationship between her and Brahms was, as well as Brahms's sometimes extraordinary insensitivity: " On Dec 7th I gave another soirée, at which I played Johannes ' Handel Variations.

Clara Schumann premiered the work in Hamburg on December 7, when she visited Brahms's home town to give a series of performances, which also included the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor — which had not been well received when Brahms introduced it to Leipzig in the Gewandhaus in January 1858 — and the premiere of the G minor Quartet.

With the " complete failure ," as he described it to Clara, of his first large-scale orchestral work, the First Piano Concerto, the Handel Variations became an important landmark in the developing career of Brahms.