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 Write your opinion about this CD Sonata No. 3 in F minor op. 5 · Vier Balladen op. 10Variations 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
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