Young Brahms (left) went on his first
professional tour when he was just twenty years old with the
Hungarian violinist Ede Reményi in the early summer of 1853.
Reményi (1828-1898), five years older
than Brahms, already had a sketchy past, having been banished from
Austria in 1848 for his participation in the Hungarian Revolution.
He met young Brahms in Hamburg, but with the authorities searching
for him, he fled to the United States and concertized for four years.
Returning to Germany, he arranged the 1853 concert tour that would
change Brahms's life.
While visiting the Court of Weimar, the
pair met Franz Liszt, but Reményi took offense when Brahms,
exhausted from all the traveling, fell asleep during Liszt's reading
of his new Sonata in B minor and failed to praise Liszt adequately.
The tour and the friendship with Reményi ended abruptly.
Had Brahms not slighted Liszt, he might
not have had the opportunities to enhance his newly-found friendship
with the violinist, Joseph Joachim, and to embark on the complicated
and misunderstood relationships with Robert and Clara Schumann that
changed his life.
These are some of the characters in my
new book, Three Movements for Six Hands, an Historical Novel by Terry
Row. To subscribe and reserve a copy today, send a check for $20.00 –
to cover the book, sales tax, shipping and handling – to Terry Row,
PO Box 1121, Los Alamos, CA 93440-1121. I'll send autographed copies
of the finished volume to subscribers around the publication date of
May 7, 2015, Johannes Brahms's 182nd birthday.
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