-- a special guest commentator who'll be sharing "his" Brahms with us
BRAHMS (AS WE MIGHT SAY) "DOES SCHERZO"
Scherzo for Piano in E-flat minor, Op. 4
Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), March 1958
by Ken
The above, in case you haven't guessed, is our mystery piece and pianist from last Sunday's "sneak preview of what I'm working on": the work that was identified as "Solo-piano work that comes before Op. 5," which is to say the 21-year-old Brahms's breakthrough work, the mighty and exalted Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, as performed by "Some kind of keyboard magician (don't you think?)" -- and on second hearing don't you still think? There's a tendency to think of Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991), even while ostensibly appreciating him, as a stalwart upholder of the grand Austro-Germanic Classical and Romantic tradition, which he assuredly was. Yet I often feel that this was just the most visible surface of his playing, that there was almost always something else going on, a free -- disciplined, yes, but still free -- range of imagination that he didn't adverise or flaunt but that could create not just musical intimacy but musical magic, often in standard repertory -- like many of the Beethoven piano sonatas -- where most pianists don't even know it's hiding.
I think we should really try to take in the whole of the F minor Sonata ("the whole" encompassing in this case not three or even four but five movements), but I'm not ready for that. Instead, for now we're going to jump over Op. 5 all the way to Op. 10, the set of Four Ballades that Brahms composed in 1854 -- in other words, early on in the period we're interested: 1854-58, the years when he got his new idea for the growing mass of musical material he had been developing, after transforming it from an incipient sonata for two pianos into something he thought could instead be developed into the symphony he so dearly wanted to write, and now instead was imagining as a big and bold piano concerto, which would occupy him until 1858 and not achieve performance in even preliminary form until 1859.
If these two forms, "scherzo" and "ballade," call to mind another great composer for the piano, one who may have brought to composition for the piano a higher-soaring poetic imagination than any other composer of the 19th -- or any other -- century, who happened to have wound up creating four each of these forms, scherzos and ballades, that's fine by me. It could be that this composer by sheerest chance happened also to have been in large measure a "discovery" of Robert Schumann, who was already providing Brahms with the inspiration of a composer centrally concerned with combining fluency in the Classical forms, with at the same time a grounding in the free flight of poetic imagination. Brahms would certainly have been keenly aware of this great predecessor, and all the music of his he laid hands on while the predecessor was still alive and composing up a storm until his always-fragile health gave way in 1849, when he was 39 and Brahms 16, achieving growing mastery of the piano and imagining himself as a composer.
It's not that Brahms's idea of a piano scherzo (and here we're thinking of "scherzo" not as a movement of a symphony or string quartet or other work in what we think of as "sonata form," even a piano sonata as a free-standing piano form rather than the scherzo movement of a symphony or string quartet or even piano sonata) or ballade is much like that predecessor's. Still, the fact that he gravitated to these forms, and in them let his imagination run free through subjects of human time and place and situation and mood, I don't see how any of this could have been an accident.
I don't think we often think of Brahms as, particularly, a font of supreme poetic imagination in music, but in the course of some random listening I was doing while pondering Brahms for our current project, I happened to hear the very recording we're going to be listening to in just a moment, and I was bowled over even more than I was by the Wilhelm Kempff recording of the Scherzo in E minor, with its magical range of touches and variously-breathed musical traceries. We're going to talk and learn a bit more about the construction of the Ballades, but first I'm proposing that we just listen to Kempff ensorcel his way through the Brahms Ballades. And once he's through them, I think we'll be primed for the appearance of a special guest commentator who's going to share some of the secrets of his lifelong love affair with Brahms's piano music, whom we're first going to hear play the Ballades.
BRAHMS: Ballades (4), Op. 10:
i. After the Scottish ballad: "Edward" in Herder's "Voices of the People" (Andante)
ii. Andante
iii. Intermezzo: Allegro
iv. Andante con moto
[ii. at 3:44; iii. at 10:06; iv. at 14:18] Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), February 1972
[ii. at 4:01; iii. at 9:52; iv. at 13:53] Our special guest commentator, piano. (Recording details to come later)
NOW LET'S MEET OUR SPECIAL GUEST BRAHMS-LOVER
AR wrote this liner note for The Brahms I Love --
The music of Brahms has been close to me even longer than that of my great countryman Chopin. In my very early years I had the honor to be a protégé of Joseph Joachim, the legendary interpreter, advisor and friend of Brahms' music from the very beginning.
You must remember that Brahms was alive until I was 10 years old, so for me he was a living composer, not an "old master." I still approach his music with this feeling, and in my own way I try to give the essence of the Brahms I grew to love in those early days.
On this recording you hear music from all periods of Brahms' life. The 21-year-old composer of the four Ballades, Op. 10 (1854), was full of optimistic vigor and an almost Schubertian gift of song. That he was already a master can be heard in his dramatic realization of the Scotch ballad "Edward." You immediately feel that great drama unfolding without the need of words.
The two Rhapsodies, Op. 79, written 25 years later, are big, heroic concert pieces. They are also ballade-like in nature and, along with the jovial B-minor Capriccio, they immediately capture the enthusiasm of any audience.
It is with the last piano works, Op. 116 through 119, that we reach Brahms' most personal music for his chosen instrument. Honored and respected as almost no other composer had been during his own lifetime, Brahms in his final years produced serene and nostalgic music that was ever more inward in mood. You feel in these works at first a plaintiveness, then a moment of hope and ultimately a return to a final resignation.
As his own notations in the scores indicate, they are so intensely intimate that one cannot really convey their full substance to a large audience. They should be heard quietly, in a small room, for they are actually works of chamber music for the piano.
When I listen, in my home, to this music played on a fine gramophone, I feel I receive the full impact the original listeners might have felt.
In that atmosphere -- quietly listening alone, or with a person close to you -- they take your heart.
LET'S LISTEN AGAIN TO AR'S ONLY RECORDING
(FROM 1970) OF THE FOUR BRAHMS BALLADES
Okay, you can see now that I cheated, by extracting this last part of AR's liner note and plopping it on top of this post, giving the impression that it was meant to apply to Brahms piano music other than those final series of Opp. 116-19. I'd like to think that AR wouldn't feel those words entirely inappropriate to the Scherzo in E-flat minor and the Four Ballades.
BRAHMS: Ballades (4), Op. 10:
i. After the Scottish ballad: "Edward" in Herder's "Voices of the People" (Andante)
ii. Andante
iii. Intermezzo: Allegro
iv. Andante con moto
[ii. at 4:01; iii. at 9:52; iv. at 13:53] Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA, recorded in RCA Italiana Studio, Rome, June 10-12, 1970
WE HAVE MORE WORK TO DO ON THE BALLADES, BUT
I THINK THAT'LL HAVE TO WAIT FOR ANOTHER POST
I'm thinking this is maybe not a bad place to pause.
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