<iframe src="//www.googletagmanager.com/ns.html?id=GTM-K3L4M3" height="0" width="0" style="display:none;visibility:hidden">

Music

Age concern

9 February 2017

3:00 PM

9 February 2017

3:00 PM

Brahms didn’t always have a beard. The picture in the London Symphony Orchestra’s programme book showed him clean-shaven, and rightly. The beard didn’t reach its final imposing form until 1878, around the time Brahms started sketching his Second Piano Concerto. (‘Prepare your wife for the grisly spectacle,’ he wrote to his friend Bernhard Scholz, ‘for something so long suppressed cannot be beautiful.’)

Already a subscriber? Log in

Easter flash sale:
10 issues for $1

Subscribe this Easter and get the next 10 issues of the magazine, plus website and app access, all for just $1.

  • Weekly delivery of the magazine
  • Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app
  • Spectator Australia podcasts and newsletters
  • Full access to spectator.co.uk
Or

Unlock 3 articles a month

REGISTER


Comments

Easter flash sale: 10 issues for $1

Join the conversation with other Spectator Australia readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Close