Johannes Brahms composed his first piano concerto at a very young age, between 20 and 26. The almost one-hour work is both a physical and an intellectual challenge to any pianist; Brahms’s robust piano style, the intensity of his music calls for special stamina. Analysing the Piano Concerto in D minor, one critic compared it to the passionate minor-key compositions of the literary and musical movement from 80 years earlier, terming it a ‘Sturm und Drang’ work. The impressive opening movement stands out with its symphonic-scale orchestral exposition and great character contrasts; the jagged rhythm of the main theme on the extended pedal note is reminiscent of the beginning of Beethoven’s Ninth. Brahms calledthe contrastive Adagio following the stormy opening movement Clara Schumann’s ‘gentle portrait’. (Brahms had met the Schumanns in September 1853 and six months later, following Schumann’s nervous breakdown, suicide attempt and moving to the sanatorium at Endenich, he returned to the family in Düsseldorf to help Clara. He remained there until the death of his older colleague in 1756. To him Clara represented the ideal woman as a wife, mother and musician.) The sonata-rondo finale of the piano concertois thought to have been directly modelled on the closing movement of Beethoven’s Concerto in C minor.However, in spite of the many formal similarities, this music nevertheless speaks in Brahms’s voice and features numerous original ideas,such as the fugato in the middle episode as well as the effective,large-scale and coda with two changes of tempo,following the grand cadence.