Sentimental Work: Jeffrey Solow

Brahms’s Symphony no.1 is the piece that made me want to be a musician. Before that, I was learning the cello but I didn’t listen to classical music much outside of my lessons – I’d often fall asleep at concerts. That all changed when I was 15 years old, and my first summer at the Music Academy of the West festival in Santa Barbara. Maurice Abravanel was conducting the student orchestra and he gave us the First Symphony to play. Now I know that people often say the fourth movement inspired them to take up music, but for me it was the opening to the first movement that really hit me between the eyes. The lush Brahmsian harmonies with the violins going up as the cellos go down, leading into all kinds of climaxes, all with that booming, insistent timpani behind it – I was at just the right age to appreciate it, and I loved being a part of it as the harmonies played around me. When I got home I discovered we had an LP of the 1956 recording, with Bruno Walter conducting. I wore out that record in a month, and I can credit my entire career to that one piece…