Plus, we get to have some fun with Weber's Oberon Overture
and Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream music (than
which musical wonderfulness doesn't come any wonderfuller)
Given Brahms's reverance for the great masters who preceded him, and in particular one who had revolutionized the way composers could think about the piano, how could he not have been keenly aware of Chopin?"Johannes Brahms began his musical life studying the piano, and his earliest, truly great compositions were solo piano works, both presented here. The Scherzo in E-flat minor, Op. 4, is the earliest surviving composition by Brahms. He wrote it in November 1851 when he was 18 and published it as Op. 4, rather than Op. 1, because, he explained to a friend, “when one shows one's self for the first time, people must first see the head and not the feet.” Musical scholars feel that, despite the composer’s denial, it obviously shows a “dependence” on Chopin’s scherzi, and quotes from Heinrich Marschner’s Hans Heiling at bar 46 as well."
-- from an online note accompanying a listing for Yefim Bronfman's early recording of Op. 4 (the Scherzo) and Op. 5 (the F minor Piano Sonata)
SO, HERE AGAIN IS HOW BRAHMS'S SCHERZO GOES
(in two performances we haven't heard before and one we have)
BRAHMS: Scherzo for Piano in E-flat minor, Op. 4
Yefim Bronfman, piano. MusicMasters, recorded c1986
Julius Katchen, piano. Decca, recorded in Decca Studio No. 3, West Hampstead (London), 1964
Wilhelm Kempff, piano. DG, recorded in the Beethovensaal, Hannover (Germany), March 1958
I'll have something to say about the performances farther down. For now, I suggest keeping in mind the ages of the pianists at the time of recording -- roughly 28, 38, and 62. Turns out, it seems to matter.
by Ken
In a moment we're going to hear how a Chopin scherzo goes. But first let me say that it's been a good week for me, musically and in other ways as well, I guess. (Funny how the two often go together!) After a couple of years in which it was all but impossible for me to listen to music on my aging computer, which I imagined was suffering from some likely fatal hardware or at least heart-stoppingly expensive malady whose repair would likely cost almost as much as replacing the poor old computer, well --
Long story short (I actually started writing the whole story before just chucking it, since what interest could it have for anybody but me?), like magic I managed to solve all the problems, and then some, and suddenly I found myself with wonderful music pouring forth from both my computers. It used to be that even when I was most depressed about the purposelessness of these posts, the music revived me. So lately I've been allowing myself to wallow a bit in the pleasure of all this music, and later in this post we're going to allow it ourselves the luxury of some pleasurable musical wallowing.
NOW HERE'S HOW A CHOPIN SCHERZO GOES
(via a Czech, a Hungarian, and of course the Pole -- thrice over!)
