Johannes Brahms composed his A-major serenade in 1858–59, and he conducted the first performance on February 10, 1860 in Hamburg. The score calls for two flutes and piccolo, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, two horns, violas, cellos, and basses.
Today the two serenades composed by Johannes Brahms are often thought of as orchestral preparations for his celebrated four symphonies.
The serenades clearly are the work of a young man who was gaining experience writing for an orchestra and learning about large-scale orchestral form. And they are the obvious link between the earliest stage of Brahms’ career, when the slim and beardless composer wrote little but piano music, and the full maturity of the commanding, grandfatherly figure whose symphonies and concertos were the talk of Vienna.
But Brahms’ serenades are also his response to the great tradition of Mozart serenades and divertimentos, and like Beethoven’s septet and Schubert’s octet, they are small masterpieces in their own right.
Here is Leonard Bernstein conducting the Vienna Philharmonic in this lovely Serenade #2:
