Cocktail Party Fact: If you remember the “Marlboro Man” and the music from the film “The Magnificent Seven,” check out the very end of this symphony–you’ll be surprised by what you hear.
Commitment Factor: About 35 minutes
Vital Statistics: Modern Period (1942). A four-movement symphony with the scherzo placed second, rather than third, as is traditional.
What [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Written for his close friend, the violinist/composer Joseph Joachim, this is the last great concerto to leave room at the end of the first movement for the soloist to improvise a cadenza (based, we hope, on the movement’s main themes). Modern performers can select one of many cadenzas previously composed (including one [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: I added the brackets in the title. Brahms got it wrong. The theme isn’t really by Haydn, though it’s a great tune all the same (it even has its own name: the “St. Anthony Choral”).
Commitment Factor: About 20 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1873). A theme (in two parts, both repeated thus: AABB), [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: The third movement of this trio and the fifth movement of the German Requiem were both written in response to the death of Brahms’ mother.
Commitment Factor: About 25 minutes
Vital Statistics: Late Romantic Period (1865). The trio is probably the only important piece written for this combination of instruments. Its four movements include [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Brahms’ most colorful symphony orchestrally speaking, this work was unpopular with audiences for many years after its premiere.
Commitment Factor: About 40 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1885). A four-movement symphony with some interesting features: there are no literal repeats anywhere, and the finale is powerfully tragic in tone (in both cases, Brahms probably [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: It’s commonplace in music history to speak of Dvorak’s debt to Brahms, but no one ever mentions what Brahms owed his Czech friend. This symphony is one example, being essentially inspired by Dvorak’s Fifth, with which it shares both key and overall conception (a major-key symphony with a turbulent, minor key finale).
Commitment [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Doesn’t the opening sound a lot like Stephen Foster’s song “Beautiful Dreamer?” Pure coincidence, of course.
Commitment Factor: About 45 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1878). A four-movement symphony with Brahms’ customary lyrical interlude in moderate tempo replacing the standard, third movement scherzo (joke).
What to Listen For: The second theme of the first movement, [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Brahms carried this symphony around with him for something like 20 years before getting up the courage to perform it. Believe it or not, the tremendous introduction to the first movement, with its pounding timpani and mysterious suggestions of tunes to come, was added as an afterthought.

Commitment Factor: About 45 minutes
Vital Statistics: [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: After completing this piece, Brahms wrote to a friend: “I have just completed a teeny, tiny piano concerto with a teeny, tiny, wisp of a Scherzo.” This is, of course, the longest piano concerto in the entire standard repertoire.
Commitment Factor: About 47 - 50 minutes
Vital Statistics: Romantic Period (1881). Most concertos have [...]

Cocktail Party Fact: Never conventionally religious (he started life as a whorehouse pianist working the Hamburg docks), Brahms at one point thought of removing all reference to God from this piece and calling it “A Human Requiem.” Nevertheless, he knew his Bible well enough to select the texts for this work himself.
Commitment Factor: If you [...]