This jolly Brahms duet really isn't part of our "work unit," but we kind of have to hear it about now

Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; Peter Schreier, tenor; Karl Engel, piano. DG, recorded in Studio Lankwitz, Berlin, June 1982
Iris Vermillion, mezzo-soprano; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; Helmut Deutsch, piano. CPO, from Brahms Complete Duets & Quartets, recorded in the Kleiner Sendesaal of RBB (Berlin-Brandenburg Radio), Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1997-2003, released 2017


AND WE HAVE TO HEAR IT BECAUSE --

You remember this haunting little Brahms solo-piano piece we've been listening to, right?

BRAHMS: Ballades for Piano (4), Op. 10: No. 1 in D minor,
After the Scottish ballad: "Edward" in Herder's "Voices of the People" (Andante)


Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), February 1972

Arthur Rubinstein, piano. RCA, recorded in RCA Italiana Studio, Rome, June 10-12, 1970

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, piano. Live performance from Lugano, 1981

If you're wondering what the musical connection is between our jolly little duet and the First Ballade, the point is that there isn't one, which is why I said at the outset that the vocal setting really isn't part of our work unit, whereas the Ballade emphatically is. Obviously there is a connection, though; it's one that existed in Brahms's head. Op. 75, No. 1 is a vocal setting of the very Scottish ballad -- incorporated by Herder in his Voices of the People -- that inspired the D minor Ballade.

We might recall here the observation Arthur Rubinstein made in his liner note for the LP The Brahms I Love which included his recording of the Op. 10 Ballades:

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.

Well, I don't think that unprompted we would get just from the piano ballade exactly what sort of "great drama" is unfolding there, but I think we get a pretty powerful sense that its subject matter is of great urgency and more than a shading of darkness.

And for me, at least, there's no question that the piano ballade packs a way more powerful punch than the setting Brahms eventually felt compelled to make of the actual ballad, which for all the bar-by-bar micro-ingenuity of Brahms's setting of this seemingly endless series of doggerel-like quatrains. Our two performances, you'll surely have noticed, are quite different, or at least seem so at initial encounter. We can take a few moments to listen to them again (scrolling back for the texts):

BRAHMS: "Edward" (duet for alto and tenor), Op. 75, No. 1


Brigitte Fassbaender, mezzo-soprano; Peter Schreier, tenor; Karl Engel, piano. DG, recorded in Studio Lankwitz, Berlin, June 1982
Iris Vermillion, mezzo-soprano; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; Helmut Deutsch, piano. CPO, from Brahms Complete Duets & Quartets, recorded in the Kleiner Sendesaal of RBB (Berlin-Brandenburg Radio), Berlin-Charlottenburg, 1997-2003, released 2017

The big difference, of course, is the wildly thumping piano part in the CPO version, which makes the performance sound so much more dramatic. Or does it? It seems to me that either way it plays out as a ripoff of Schubert's "Erl-König," with one performance playing up and the other performance maybe trying to play down the resemblance. Otherwise, the performances seem to me uneasily similar, with the sympathetic vocal lie of the Mother's stanzas helping our mezzos make her pretty sympathetic, especially against the mousy tenorizing of our Edwards.

I wonder whether the song would sound any different with a tonally more vital and sympathetic tenor? Or is Brahms's setting perhaps designed to lead us into a complete misunderstanding of what's actually going on between Mom and Teddy -- right up to the startling revelation of the very last line, which itself may not be entirely clear until we figure out just what sonny boy is finally forced bt his shockingly forgetful Mom to remind her about.

(A side note: After I thought I'd completed my text-and-translation box graphic, or come as I close as I was going to, I noticed that I'd left out the repetition of the word "you" in the climactic last line of Edward's final reply. Which, just so you know, is a real pain. Nevertheless, I decided quickly that yes, it would require remaking the box to allow for the insertion of the second "you" because this is pretty much the whole point of the ballad. once I'd remade the box graphic, I even wondered whether I shouldn't perhaps have italicized one or both of the "you"s. Wouldn't the musical setting justify it? Possibly so, but I decided just as quickly that I wasn't remaking the box again, just for that.)

If you want a blow-by-blow description of how Brahms managed his setting, by all means check out Emily Dean Hansen's account in her extensive note on the four Balladen und Romanzen that make up Op. 75 (all duets, but in different configurations). "Edward," by the way, is in her view "the greatest Brahms duet of all." Perhaps you'll agree that this setting adds up to more than what I described as "bar-by-bar micro-ingenuity." Here she is, for example, on "Stanza 1":

In the two bars before the alto’s (mother’s) entrance with her first question, the piano left hand establishes a hushed, low and persistent pedal point on C. The right hand plays broken octaves. When she enters on an upbeat with her arching melody, the right hand plays arpeggios that conceal a doubling of the melody. The repeated name “Edward” is given a characteristic falling third, and her melody ends with a half-cadence, reiterated by the descending half-step on “O!” which will become a “marker” for both the mother’s and son’s stanzas. It is punctuated by an arching arpeggio on the “dominant” chord.

Yeah, OK. One point I would note, though, is Emily's description of the "hushed, low and persistent pedal point" sounded by the piano at the outset. This suggests that as between our two wildly different performance conceptions of the piano part, it's Karl Engel & Co. rather than Helmut Deutsch & Co. who've got it right.

In the end, I decided we probably did need to hear Brahms's "Edward" setting if only to understand just how shocking the material of the original ballad is, which I think may have had something to do with the itch Brahms himself seems to have felt to return to the subject more than two decades after drawing from it that inspiration for Op. 10, No. 1 -- for the sake of the this-changes-everything revelation in the last line. So I thought we should have this under our belts as we prepare to return to Op. 10 for what really interests me: a closer listen to the gloriously free play of Brahms's musical imagination.

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