Bob Draper responds to Scott Morrison's comment that the opening of Brahms'
First piano Concerto is "crass."

>No way.  This is one of the greatest openings in music.  It like a sudden
>storm followed by a period of calm with occassional rumbles.

Jan Swafford, in his biography of Brahms, maintains that the opening of
this concerto is expressive of Brahms' feelings about Robert Schumann
hurling himself into the Rhone.  It was going to be a symphony, originally,
I believe.

In a review of Bergman's film, The Seventh Seal, many years ago, when it
first appeared, Stanley Kaufman, in The New Republic, called the opening of
that "pretentious." If he had said "portentious," I wouldn't be remembering
it now.  The Brahms is portentious.

Jim Tobin