BRAHMS' PIANO WORKS
Played by HOWARD JONES
Scherzo from Sonata in F Minor, Op. 5
Waltzes from Op. 39
BRAHMS' Op. I (published in 1853, when he was twenty) was a work for, Piano,
Ho began his career as a pianist, and during his early years of composition he tackled tho Piano Sonata form several times. He had not yet learnt how to make- the beat of the keyboard, especially as regards delicacy and colour. His further study of the possibilities of tho Pianoforte was made through the medium of Variations, of which he had written some half-dozen sots by 1866. Then, for about a dozen years, he almost entirely ceased to write music for the Pianoforte alone, his next work (Op. 76, in 1879) being a set of eight pieces, four entitled Capriccio and four Intermezzo. The titles broadly indicate tho two types of piece, the one brisk or vigorous, the other quieter, sometimes almost grave.
These titles, with Rhapsody (thrice), Ballad and Romance (once each) are the only names Brahms gave to the thirty pieces that constitute the bulk of his middle and later poriod Piano music-a collection of works, mostly in simple forms, that abound in interest and vitality, and in emotional breadth and purity. In this, as in most of Brahms' music, the emotion is not superficial. There are charms upon the surface, but some of the best must be sought a little beneath it.
Brahms was fond of internal melodies and cross-rhythms (for example, two notes to a beat in one hand against three to the boat in the other), and to the lyrical beauty of his music is added a bracing ruggedness of outline.