We often hear of him as one of the three Bs, a pillar, along with Bach and Beethoven, of the Western musical canon. Yet he was a controversial figure from the start, and just a few decades ago many composers and scholars were still reserving judgment on Johannes Brahms (1833-97). Little wonder: His first and most devoted supporter, Robert Schumann (1810-56), called him “another John the Baptist, whose revelations will puzzle many of the Pharisees, and every one else, for centuries.”

Many who heard Brahms’s music when it was initially presented couldn’t figure out what to make of it. The critic of Leipzig’s Signale, reviewing the First Piano Concerto, gave voice to the common claim that his music was too academic and unemotional to give pleasure – that it offered only “waste, barren dreariness.” George Bernard Shaw, who also disdained the composer, asserted the contrary view: “the real Brahms is nothing more than a sentimental voluptuary.” It was a time, as my late friend Nicolas Slonimsky noted, when critical intemperance was the rule. Still, it’s surprising to find Tchaikovsky describing Brahms as “a giftless bastard” and declaring, “It annoys me that this self-inflated mediocrity is hailed as a genius.” Here in America critic Philip Hale proposed that Boston’s new Symphony Hall mark a special door with the words: “Exit – in case of Brahms.”

The musical icon of the anti-Brahmsians, Richard Wagner, labeled the Brahms-Schumann axis the “Romantic-Classical” school, implying that what they offered was a pale substitute for his more full-blooded, richly Romantic art. Now, Lincoln Center’s Great Performers series, which opens the season this Wednesday with a month-long Brahms Festival, has chosen for it the title, “The Classical Romantic.” Highlights include the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig conducted by Herbert Blomstedt; the Dresden Philharmonic under the direction of Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos; pianist Mikhail Pletnev (performing both Brahms piano concertos); Austrian baritone Wolfgang Holzmair; the New York recital debut of British cellist Natalie Clein; violinist Julia Fischer; vocal soloists Twyla Robinson and Nathan Gunn and the Westminster Choir in the German Requiem; and panel discussions led by Columbia University’s Walter Frisch, whose latest book is “Brahms: The Four Symphonies.”

Writers attempting to put Brahms in proper perspective have produced articles with titles like “Brahms the Indecisive,” “Brahms the Progressive,” and “Brahms as Liberal.” But perhaps, I suggested to Mr. Frisch, we should think of him as “Brahms the Redeemer” – a man whose radicalism rested in a desire to keep alive the craft and traditions found in earlier music. Reasserting core values he discovered in Bach, Handel, Schutz, Palestrina, and Beethoven was no easy task, given the populist cultural atmosphere of his day. “I think that’s a fair assessment,” he said with a chuckle. “The old art was not lost, of course. But Brahms placed high value in it.”

To be politically liberal in Brahms’s Vienna meant to be artistically conservative. As Jan Swafford points out in his biography of the composer, the city was immersed in a struggle between an ascending political right wing and a waning left. Wagner had declared the work of Bach, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven superseded by the new music, and the more powerful right embraced Wagner’s revolutionary call for a new wave. “For the right wing,” wrote Mr. Swafford, “the exigencies of form proclaimed by the old liberals were to be swept away by a music of passion and blood-instinct.”

The charges against Brahms of being too cerebral, dry, and complex – too chamber-like even in the symphonies – were made in the context of a culture war that pitted the masses against a small group seen as elitist and, not coincidentally, too Jewish in their tastes.

One critic complained of Brahms’s use of “Jewish-temple triplets.” Another lumped him with Eduard Hanslick (whose book, “The Beautiful in Music,” argued that music was a pure form, not directly expressive of emotions), Karl Goldmark, and Adalbert Goldschmidt as “the music-loving and music-making Jewry.” Popular support for Bruckner – a composer scorned by Brahms – was, wrote Mr. Swafford, “identical with the struggle to form a new society purged of the Jew-ridden liberals.” Brahms, who was not Jewish, found the trend repugnant. “I can scarcely speak of it,” he said. “It seems so despicable to me.”

“Think of the American culture wars,” said Mr. Frisch. “You could see Brahms and Bruckner lined up for congressional hearings on the arts. It’s ironic, because Brahms is often viewed as the conservative one. “Yet, while he kept one foot in the past, the other was always firmly planted in the future. Brahms, reported Clara Schumann, spoke of “how the old masters had the freest form, while modern compositions move within the stiffest and most narrow limits.” He was simply looking beyond the limits of the then-popular style, and he encouraged many young composers to do the same.

Though Brahms kept one foot in the past, the other was always firmly planted in the future, looking beyond the limits of the then-popular style. “He encouraged Richard Strauss,” Mr. Frisch noted, “even though he thought some of the radical harmonic ideas Strauss used were not properly prepared. He was very supportive of young composers and set up prizes for them. Arnold Schonberg was very influenced by Brahms.”

Indeed, Schonberg wrote “Brahms the Progressive” to link his own 12-tone technique – in which every aspect of a piece is derived from a single thematic kernel – with the tightly controlled mastery of form found in the music of Brahms. “Certain works by Brahms are not easy to listen to,” Mr. Frisch continued. “They can be gritty. The harmonic language moves quickly, with all these tiny little motifs spinning around. Instead of writing a four-measure phrase he’ll write one that’s two-and-a-half measures long, and it’s hard to walk out humming it.”

As for the charge that even in his symphonies he was writing chamber music: “It works both ways,” Herbert Blomstedt told me. “When you hear his chamber music, his thoughts seem orchestral.”

During the festival, it will be interesting to see how contemporary musicians deal with various aspects of Brahms’s performance practice. We are used to hearing the symphonies, for example, played by huge modern orchestras. Yet in 1885, the year the Fourth Symphony was performed by the orchestra in Meiningen, there were just 49 players and only eight first violins. Brahms even argued against supplementing the strings for a richer sonority.

Herbert Blomstedt will be conducting an orchestra with strong historical ties to Brahms, but said he’s not concerned about the size of the ensemble. “Franz Liszt premiered ‘Lohengrin’ in Weimar, and he had only eight first violins,” he noted. “I’m sure it was not what Wagner would have liked, but that is what they had. Since the orchestra in Meiningen was known as the best orchestra at the time, it’s possible Brahms didn’t want to risk adding other players.”

The important thing, as Maestro Blomstedt put it, is the sound, being able to hear all the voices. “Since I’ve been at the Gewandhaus, I’ve been able to do this by using the old German seating for the orchestra, in which the second violins are on the right,” he explained. “It is evident that any score written up until World War II had this seating in mind. I saw a picture of Furtwangler in 1957, and he was using the American-style seating! Now the trend is going the other way. Daniel Barenboim uses the old seating in Chicago.”

Mr. Blomstedt’s approach is, for the most part, intuitive. “Especially when playing Brahms, the performance has to have a very deep dimension of sound and content,” he explained. “I’m very concerned about the message the music brings. This is something that binds him with Beethoven. There is always a message in the music, even if you can’t put your finger on what it is. It has an ethical point of view. That is the most satisfying thing to bring out.”

Mr. Frisch put it a different way. “There’s an integrity to Brahms’s music, an honesty,” he said. “In some ways he was the last moment on the step to modernism – a point where everything was in balance: aesthetic beauty and intellectual rigor.” Beginning this Wednesday, Brahms fans at Lincoln Center will be getting plenty of both. It is a great way to open the season. But just in case, exit doors are clearly marked.

Mr. Isacoff is the editor of Piano Today magazine. His most recent book is “Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization” (Alfred A. Knopf).

Vienna in New York

Highlights of Great Performers’ “Brahms: The Classical Romantic” series: Wolfgang Holzmair will sing selections from his German and Magelone song cycles (October 17 at Alice Tully Hall).

Herbert Blomstedt will conduct the Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig, with soloist Mikhail Pletnev, in the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor and Symphony No. 2 in D major (October 18 at Avery Fisher Hall) and the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major and Symphony No. 4 in E minor (October 19 at Avery Fisher Hall).

Natalie Clein will perform the Cello Sonatas No. 1 in E minor and No. 2 in F major, with pianist Charles Owen (October 31 at Walter Reade Theater).

On November 8, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos will conduct the Dresden Philharmonic, with soloist Julia Fischer, in the Violin Concerto in D major and Symphony No. 1 in C minor, at 3 p.m., and Ein Deutsches Requiem, with the Westminster Symphonic Choir, at 8 p.m. (at Avery Fisher Hall).

Lincoln Center, 212-875-5030