Unlike most concertos, which are in three movements, this piece is in four:
Despite its ambitious scale, when Brahms sent a copy of the completed score to his friend, the surgeon and violinist Theodore Billroth (to whom Brahms had dedicated his first two string quartets), he described the concerto as "some little piano pieces". Brahms was rather fond of mis-describing his music in this way - in a letter to Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, he called the second movement of this work a "tiny whisp of a scherzo", when it is in fact ten minutes long and very dramatic; similarly, he had written to his publisher of the generally cheerful Symphony No. 2 (1877) "the score is so sad you won't be able to bear it", also saying the sheet music should be printed with a funeral black border.
The piece was given its public premiere in Budapest on November 9, 1881 with Brhams himself playing the solo part. Unlike the Piano Concerto No. 1, which was rather cooly received, the Piano Concerto No. 2 was a great success, and Brahms went on to play the piece in a number of successful concerts in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, some conducted by Hans von Bülow.
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