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 Write your opinion about this CD Sonata No. 1 in C major op. 1 · Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor op. 2
Scherzo op. 4
Andreas Boyde, pianoAndreas Boyde, a German pianist living in London, is an internationally renowned soloist. He studied in Dresden with Christa Holzweissig and Amadeus Webersinke as well as in London with James Gibb. His mentor and supporter Malcom Frager has been decisive for the pianist’s further path. In addition to the major standard piano works from all epochs, Boyde also dedicates himself to contemporary music. One of the most important focuses of his broad repertoire is the piano works of Johannes Brahms. He now begins a recording of that composer’s entire oeuvre for OehmsClassics. The first release includes the Piano Sonatas Nos. 1 and 2 – the two earliest numbered works of the young Brahms. The Scherzo op. 4 appeared even before these two sonatas. ‘Fully fledged, like Minerva’: Brahms’s Earliest Piano Music …when music calls, do not all the fibres of my heart dissolve and extend like so many polyp arms, trembling with desire, wanting to embrace – whom? what? …An unseen something, existing in other worlds. Jean Paul The earliest piano works of Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) have been overshadowed by his late piano miniatures, Op. 79 and Op. 116 – Op. 119. At least superficially, the early sonatas and scherzo are so wildly different from the introspective, lyrical later works that they seem to have been written by someone else. In order to approach them, we need to acknowledge that they were the work of a twenty-year-old, full of passion, optimism and youthful fervour, rather than a solitary, hard-bitten sixty-year-old. Where the late works are a concentrated fusion of form and lyricism, the two early sonatas and the scherzo on this recording are the very embodiment of Romantic excess. It was with these piano works that Brahms chose to announce himself to the wider world. In 1853, the then unknown pianist-composer took the bold step of going to visit Robert and Clara Schumann in Düsseldorf to show them his works. It was a meeting that would change the course of his life. Schumann’s response to hearing Brahms’s early piano works was the article Neue Bahnen, an explosive piece of writing that trumpeted Brahms as the new, ‘fully-fledged’ saviour of German music. Clara Schumann’s diary entry gives us a more private sense of the encounter. She wrote: It is really moving to see him sitting at the piano, with his interesting young face which becomes transfigured when he plays, his beautiful hands which overcome the greatest difficulties with perfect ease (his things are very difficult), and in addition these remarkable compositions.
Clara Schumann’s diary, October 1853
Most tellingly, Clara reminds us that Brahms, at the time, was a phenomenal pianist, that he was young and beautiful, and that he wore his musical heart on his sleeve (all of which was to change!). Although we no longer have all the music he played for the Schumanns during those first euphoric weeks (‘sonatas for violin and piano, string quartets, etc.’ are mentioned in a letter to the violinist Joseph Joachim), we can imagine their impact through the works that have survived, namely the Scherzo Op. 4 and the Op. 1 and Op. 2 sonatas which Schumann helped him to publish immediately. Perhaps the imaginative key to these works is found in Brahms’s literary interests. Despite the provinciality of his life in Hamburg (perhaps, indeed, because of it), he lived an extremely rich life of the mind. He was steeped in Romantic literature, favouring the most extreme authors such as Jean Paul and Novalis, with their half-formed, rhapsodic literary styles. He was also a great fan of E.T.A. Hoffmann, whose extraordinary wit and fantasy spawned the character of Johannes Kreisler, the quintessentially Romantic ‘mad musician’ with whom Brahms closely identified. The musical ‘ingredients’ of these works are various, with each one taking precedence at different points. Virtuosity and passion are equally integral to the music, particularly in the F sharp minor Sonata Op. 2, an Everest of emotional and physical endurance. Brahms’s lifelong preoccupation with folksong is captured in the slow movements of both sonatas. Although the opening of the C major Sonata Op. 1 initially recalls (at least superficially) the heroic opening of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier sonata, pathos and inwardness take over within a minute. However, each massive section, ranging from wildly extrovert, tumultuous passages to brooding lyricism, is counterbalanced within the overall structure, an aspect of the music which is brought out with great conviction in this performance. Even aged eighteen, it went against the grain for Brahms to write furious or tender passages on a whim. The works are epic in stature, but like the greatest musical and literary epics, they embody the profoundly satisfying combination of emotional pathos and formal rigour that we encounter in Brahms’s music throughout his life. Natasha Loges
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