This is a subject I've wanted to vent about for some time, and after reading some recording reviews by supposed "experts," I feel that now is the time to do it. And what better place than here.
I'm talking about the issue of repeats in the first movements of the first three symphonies. It seems that today, this wouldn't be a controversy anymore, and that they would always be taken. But finding recordings with repeats is not that easy, especially for the First Symphony, and even more rare in live performances.
Idiot reviewers even castigate conductors for TAKING the repeats with such foolish nonsense as "If he were alive today, he would have never included them." And other such idiocies.
Let's look at the repeats. The one in the First Symphony is the least commonly taken, partly because the whole symphony is already the longest of the four in terms of performance time. It's the only one that doesn't go back to the beginning of the movement (because of the Un poco sostenuto introduction). At the first ending, Brahms's simple differentiation between exposition repeat and the beginning of the development is intriguing. It's all about a half-step. The hammering descending thirds at the end of the exposition finally move down, and at the first ending, the strings go down a half-step to C, leading back into the exposition. At the second ending, this descent is now a whole step, leading to the B major at the beginning of the development section. This was quite simple, but took some planning. The repeat is unpopular because it makes the first movement as long as the finale. In my opinion, this is a justification--adds balance to the whole.
The Second Symphony is also controversial because the first movement is so enormously long, even without the repeat. If you take it, you have a 21-minute movement. But it is taken more often than the one in the First because the difference is more than just a half-step. The first ending is eight bars long, and eight bars of actual non-repeated music are cut if the repeat is omitted. Again--balance. If you take the repeat, the first movement is about as long as the other three combined, which is different, but another sort of balance. Conductors might be frightened at a 21-minute movement in a Brahms symphony, but this time you've got a relatively brief finale, and these same conductors won't shy away from Mahler's 30-minute movements, after all!
The repeat in the Third is the least controversial, and even the pundits argue for its inclusion. This is because the first ending completes the descending A-minor arpeggio, then leads back to the exposition with A natural-C natural in the strings. When going back to the beginning, of course, you have F-A flat at the top of the opening chords. One of the biggest storylines in the symphony is the tension between A-flat and A-natural (or F minor and F major). The A-minor ending of the exposition, followed immediately by the opening chords, which include a prominent A-flat, are a microcosm of this storyline. If you skip the repeat, you plow right past this and miss it. This is, of course, the shortest symphony, and the movement is only about 13 minutes even with the repeat, about as long as that of the Fourth.
Then we come to the Fourth, which of course has no repeat. Here, the "experts" make moronic comments like "By the time he wrote the Fourth, he understood that repeats were no longer necessary." This is, of course, pure bunk. What Brahms does in the Fourth is a technique he had employed as far back as the G-minor Piano Quartet: compose a movement without an exposition repeat, and begin your development section as if it WERE an exposition repeat, thus "fooling" your listeners until the divergence. This, of course, only works if you are expecting an exposition repeat, which, having heard three previous symphonies by Brahms, his audiences surely would have. In addition, the Fourth has a disguised arrival of the recapitulation, so the "false repeat" at the opening of the development is actually part of the recapitulation (in a way)! Look at the finale of the First for another, more extreme example of a "telescoped" development and recapitulation.
In conclusion, the repeats are vital and necessary for the organic structures of these symphonies, and should never be omitted. Conductors who do so should be ashamed of themselves. As controversial as Lenny Bernstein could be, we at least owe him the gratitude of almost single-handedly reviving the practice of including expo repeats in recordings.
Claudio Abbado sadly fell into the trap with his early 90s box set that is still available at an expensive full price. This set has almost everything going for it--the overtures and Haydn Variations, plus the four short one-movement choral-orchestral works. But Abbado included the repeats in 2 and 3, but not in 1. One wonders why--there was still plenty of space on the disc. I love and treasure this set, but had to go out and get Lenny's 1980s live recording to get a First with the repeat. We shouldn't have to bother with this at all. Those who don't like the repeats are not hearing the symphonies as they were meant to be heard, and they are flat, dead-on WRONG!
Thanks for indulging my rant.
On exposition repeats in the symphonies
