Episode Details

Johannes Brahms spent twenty-one years writing his First Symphony because he was terrified of the comparison to Beethoven. When it finally premiered, a critic called it "Beethoven's Tenth" — exactly the comparison Brahms had dreaded. He was the most technically accomplished composer of his era, and the fear of not being good enough drove him to destroy dozens of his own works, burning manuscripts he considered unworthy of his own impossible standards.

This episode traces Brahms from his Hamburg waterfront childhood through the friendship with the Schumanns, the decades-long struggle with the First Symphony, and the late works produced by a man who never stopped measuring himself against the dead.

• Brahms's childhood playing piano in Hamburg waterfront taverns and the early patronage of Schumann
• The complicated relationship with Clara Schumann after Robert's breakdown and death
• Twenty-one years to finish the First Symphony and the Beethoven comparison he could not escape
• The manuscripts he burned and the late chamber works produced by a perfectionist at peace