Felix Delbrueck wrote regarding Brahms orchestrations:

>...  The only work I can think of where the orchestration (and the piano
>writing, for that matter) doesn't always seem to work is the 1st piano
>concerto.

The begining puts me off. Good musical idea, buut  bad realisation...

>Incidentally, Rachmaninoff, whom I otherwise admire very much as an
>interpreter, disliked the concerto so much on these counts that he
>strongly berated Vladimir Horowitz for playing it.  By contrast, he
>is supposed to have particularly liked Grieg's concerto.

What's thatsuppose to mean?

>De gustibus non est disputandum - but it is nevertheless strange that a
>master like R should reject the work for these technical reasons.  If he
>did not like the orchestration, he could have rewritten it, and great
>virtuosi can show up the beauty in writing that is otherwise thought
>deficient.

Maybe he didn't enjoy playing it because he didn't like the piano writing.
And yes, he could reorchestrate B1, but maybe he still respected it as a
piece of art and didn't want to change anything.

>...  I can both criticise the 1st concerto and see that it is in many
>ways a great and powerful work.  I tend to agree with Neville Cardus
>about Brahms's use of 'mechanical' sequences and transitions, but this
>does not make me enjoy the many parts of great wisdom and eloquence any
>the less.  Incidentally, I react with similarly mixed feelings - great
>parts interspersed among interminable bridge passages and sequences - to
>much of Wagner's music, who is so often considered Brahms's antipode.

I see your point regarding Wagner and Brahms. Different sides of the same
coin.

They may seem mechanical because they lack the dramatic impact that Liszt
(yes, he wrote development sections) and Beethoven could produce.

Mikael
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