In 1878 Johannes Brahms grew a massive beard and immediately used it to approach lifelong friends on the street, deadpan, introducing himself as a stranger named music director Müller. The same man burned more than 20 completed string quartets before allowing one to be published. This episode explores the space between the prankster and the perfectionist, beginning with his working-class Hamburg childhood in 1833, his grounding in Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven under Eduard Marxsen, and the debunked legend that he played piano in brothels as a boy.

We trace how violinist Joseph Joachim sent the 20-year-old to Robert and Clara Schumann, how Schumann's public prophecy crowning him the chosen one embedded a lifelong imposter complex, and how Robert's collapse pulled Brahms into managing the household and into a consuming love for Clara he chose n ...