Sonata No. 3 in F minor op. 5 · Vier Balladen op. 10
Variations on a Theme by Schumann op. 9
Andreas Boyde, piano
Andreas Boyde now presents Volume 2 of his recording of Johannes Brahms’ complete works for solo piano. About Volume 1, the Süddeutsche Zeitung wrote: “Andreas Boyde manages to square the circle here: highest intensity with youthful exuberance as well as clarity in the dense piano writing and tenderness in the suddenly emerging lyricism.”
www.klassik-heute.com: “Boyde formulates a Brahms of real beauty, with logical development of thematic processes under precise observation of motivic material. He gives the listener time and space to follow the compositional magic as a score which has had life breathed into it.”
The recording of the third piano sonata on this second volume completes the three of Brahms piano sonatas. Included on the album are also the Schumann Variations op. 9 and the Ballads op. 10.
Triumphs and Tragedies: Piano
Works from the Schumann Days
Given its status in the repertoire today,
it is hard to believe that Brahms’s Op. 5
Piano Sonata was rejected by the publishers
Breitkopf & Härtel. The work had been offered
as a replacement for another rejected work, a
violin sonata. It was finally published by Barthold
Senff in February 1854, whom Brahms
noted with satisfaction had asked him ‘to give
him as many of my works as I wish’ [Letter
to Joseph Joachim, Leipzig, 20th November
1853]. Today this sonata is seen by many as
Brahms’s crowning achievement in the genre;
it was the last piano sonata he wrote, aged
just twenty, and it stretches the boundaries of
the instrument practically to breaking point.
Like the two earlier sonatas for piano and
the Op. 4 Scherzo, the nature of Op. 5 is
inseparable from Brahms’s uniquely muscular,
densely-textured pianism. Indeed, Robert
Schumann strongly recommended that the
works be introduced to the Leipzig public with
Brahms himself at the keyboard, recalling
the impact of the astounding performance he
had witnessed in his own home a few weeks
previously. In this sonata, Brahms expanded
the typical four-movement structure by inserting
an Intermezzo between the Scherzo and
the Finale. This movement is subtitled ‘Rückblick’
(Reminiscence) and recalls material
from the second movement while preparing
the vast, manic finale. Within this massive
structure, consistent formal rigour is upheld
(Lisztian liberties with form never suited
Brahms). Nevertheless, there are moments
of extraordinary harmonic freedom that seem
almost to anticipate Debussy, wedded with
an astonishing emotional breadth. One of the
most daring contrasts is created between the
first Andante and the Scherzo. The Andante is
an extended love song, as seen by Brahms’s
letter to Senff from December 1853, in which
he requested that the publisher have ‘the following
little verse set at the head of the first
Andante, in parenthesis and in small print. It
may be necessary or convenient for comprehension
of the Andante.’
Der Abend dämmert, das Mondlicht scheint
Da sind zwei Herzen in Liebe vereint
Und halten sich selig umfangen.
Sternau
Evening draws nigh, the moonlight gleams,
As two hearts are united in love
And blissfully embrace each other.
Sternau
While most listeners turn to Brahms’s Lieder
for his representations of love, this Lied ohne
Worte is particularly persuasive and touching.
Its mood is, however, abruptly interrupted by
the frenetic Scherzo, which anticipates the
heavily ironic waltzes permeating Strauss’s
operas of madness, Elektra and Salome. However
such mood swings are scrupulously
reconciled through the unity of Brahms’s thematic
material, a device that would become
Brahms’s trademark.
Although just a few opus numbers separated
the Op. 5 F minor Sonata from the Op. 9
Sixteen Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann
(dedicated to Clara Schumann), there
was a veritable gulf between the provincial
boy Brahms had been and the ‘fully-fledged
eagle’ who returned triumphantly to Hamburg
in December 1853. Success was, however,
quickly overtaken by tragedy when on 27th
February 1854 Robert Schumann attempted to
commit suicide by throwing himself into the
Rhine. For Schumann’s birthday in 1853, Clara
Schumann had composed a set of variations
on No. 4 of Schumann’s Op. 99 Bunte Blätter,
a stark but poignant little piece. She played
this as yet unpublished work to Brahms on
20th May 1854, and he composed his own
response almost immediately. As each variation
was completed, Brahms brought it to
Clara Schumann, who was recovering from
the birth of her seventh child in addition to
dealing with the strain of Schumann’s illness.
The title page describes the work as ‘little
variations on a theme by Him, dedicated to
Her’, and the dedication itself transcends the
usual formality of such gestures: ‘To Clara
Schumann, with profound admiration (innigster
Verehrung), from J. B.’. He even arranged
for his and her variation sets to be published
almost simultaneously by Breitkopf & Härtel in
November of that year.
Brahms’s accolade lies chiefly in the dedication
and the raw material; once the music
unfolds, a more important character emerges
– that of Johannes Kreisler, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s
paradigmatic mad composer and Brahms’s
alter ego. Thus several of the variations are
annotated with the initial ‘B’ (for Brahms) and
others with ‘Kr’ (for Kreisler), revealing the
work as an exploration of the two unresolved
sides of Brahms’s creative character, recalling
Schumann’s own use of the imaginary
alter egos Florestan and Eusebius. Given its
particularly tragic genesis, it is an intensely
private work; this is reflected in the fact that
no one in the Brahms circle played it publicly.
Its delayed public premiere was given by
Hans von Bülow on 12th December 1879 in
Berlin, in a concert to raise money for (of all
things!) a Wagner monument in Bayreuth.
The four Opus 10 Ballades enshrine another
aspect of that extraordinarily bittersweet time
in early 1854. The work is dedicated to Julius
Otto Grimm, whom Brahms met in Leipzig
in autumn 1853 and who remained a lifelong
friend. Together with the violinist Joseph
Joachim and the composer Albert Dietrich, it
was Grimm and Brahms who rushed to Clara
Schumann’s side to support the family following
Schumann’s suicide attempt. Although
best heard consecutively, the Ballades did not
receive their premiere as a set, nor did they
receive it promptly; it was Brahms who first
played Nos. 1 and 4 in public in 1867 in Vienna;
Clara Schumann had performed Nos. 2 and 3
in 1860 in the same city. The Ballades signal
the end of an era for Brahms; following their
completion, he withdrew into a period of
study, and did not publish a single work for the
next six years.
Natasha Loges