Garrick Ohlsson V Program Notes

Garrick Ohlsson Brahms Exploration V (April 26, 2020) 92nd Street Y Notes by Harry Haskell JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) Scherzo in E-flat Minor, Op. 4 Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9 Sonata No. 1 in C Major, Op. 1 Allegro Andante (nach einem altdeutschen Minneliede) Scherzo: Allegro molto e con fuoco Finale: Allegro con fuoco Sixteen Waltzes, Op. 39 Pieces for Piano, Op. 119 Intermezzo in B Minor Intermezzo in E Minor Intermezzo in C Major Rhapsody in E-flat Major Johannes Brahms Born in Hamburg, May 7, 1833; died in Vienna, April 3, 1897 Scherzo in E-flat Minor, Op. 4 Composed in 1851; 10 minutes Composed when Brahms was all of eighteen, this Scherzo is one of a handful of early works that the unsparingly self-critical composer saw fit to preserve for posterity.

He shared the score with Liszt on a visit to Weimar in 1853 (but was too shy to play it for the renowned virtuoso) and with Robert and Clara Schumann in Düsseldorf a few weeks later. Robert must have had the Scherzo in mind when he described the “single pianoforte pieces, partly demoniacal, of the most graceful form” that Brahms had tried out on them.

Much of the music’s fiendish energy is generated by a tightly coiled four-note figure marked Rasch und feurig (Fast and furious), reminiscent of Chopin’s B-flat-Minor Scherzo. Brahms interweaves it with a pair of lyrical Trios to produce a gracefully rounded ABACA form. Thanks to Schumann’s enthusiastic recommendation, both the Scherzo and the Sonata in C Major, Op. 1, soon appeared under the prestigious imprint of the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf und Härtel, marking a turning point in Brahms’s career.

Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 9 Composed in 1854; 13 minutes

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Brahms composed his Op. 9 in response to Clara Schumann’s set of variations on the same melody—the first of the five “album leaves” from Robert’s Bunte Blätter (Mottled Leaves). After her husband’s attempted suicide in early 1854, when the doctors forbade Clara from visiting him, Brahms rushed to her side and consoled her with music.

“He composed variations on that wonderfully heartfelt theme that means so much to me,” she wrote in her diary, “just as last year when I composed variations for my beloved Robert.” Brahms’s Schumann Variations thus have a threefold significance: as a tribute to his tragically afflicted mentor, a token of his deepening affection for Clara, and an early manifestation of his lifelong interest in variation form.

The balance between formal rigor and melodic freedom was the essence of the form as Brahms understood it. The theme constituted a skeleton that was to be fleshed out, but not disguised, by means of melody, harmony, and rhythm. The underlying structure of the Op. 9 set is provided by Schumann’s wistful tune, which unfolds serenely in three eight-bar phrases as it hovers ambiguously between F-sharp minor and A major.

Brahms subjects it to a dazzling array of variations, from the explosive staccato outbursts of Variation 5 to the gently rippling arpeggios of No. 9 and the hushed valedictory chords that bring the work to a close. Near the end of Variation 10—music of sublime tenderness that Brahms inserted as an afterthought—a snatch of one of Clara’s own piano pieces is buried in an inner voice, an allusion so subtle and transitory that Brahms can only have meant it as a secret message. Clara naturally spotted it at once and recorded in her journal: “Brahms has had a splendid idea, a surprise for you, my Robert. He has interwoven my old theme with yours—already I can see you smile.”

Sonata No. 1 in C Major, Op. 1 Composed in 1852-53; 30 minutes The three piano sonatas that Brahms wrote in quick succession between 1852 and 1854 constituted a kind of rite of passage. Before moving on to other things, he evidently felt called upon to establish his credentials in a genre that was still closely associated with Beethoven. That the piano sonata had fallen out of fashion in the mid-1800s was due in no small measure to Robert Schumann, who had had perfected the characteristically Romantic genre of the short “character” piece as a vehicle for distilling a particular mood or musical idea to its essence. Clara Schumann found Brahms’s early piano works “rich in fantasy, depth of feeling, and mastery of form”--in short, a marriage of Classical discipline and Romantic freedom. Echoing her husband’s description of the sonatas as “veiled symphonies,” she predicted that Brahms would find “the true medium for his imagination” in writing for the orchestra.

The robust, quasi-symphonic sonorities that characterize the C-Major Sonata strained the resources of the mid-nineteenth-century piano in much the same way that Beethoven’s piano music had some years earlier. Indeed, the surging tidal wave of chords with which Brahms’s work opens unabashedly recalls the beginning of Beethoven’s monumental “Hammerklavier” Sonata. The turbulence quickly subsides, however, allowing a current of limpid lyricism to rise to the surface. Thereafter Brahms holds the two forces in dynamic balance with his characteristic blend of muscularity and tenderness. The latter quality comes to the fore in the Andante, a set of variations on a lugubrious German folksong, but the music barely comes to a rest before erupting again in a slashing Scherzo in E minor. Both it and the rondo-form Finale are marked con fuoco

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(with fire), and both contrast passages in driving triplets with music of a sharply different character.

Sixteen Waltzes, Op. 39 Composed in 1865; 20 minutes Originally scored for two pianos, Brahms’s Sixteen Waltzes were also published in a reduction for solo piano as well as a “simplified” two-hand version, both prepared by the composer himself. Although the Op. 39 set has a distinctive character in each of its guises, it’s a tribute to Brahms’s skill as an arranger that all three are equally effective on their own terms. To Eduard Hanslick, the eminent Viennese critic, he described the sixteen short pieces as “two books of innocent waltzes in Schubertian form.” It can hardly be coincidental that Brahms had just come away from editing Schubert’s twelve German Dances for publication in 1864. Hanslick, to whom the Op. 39 Waltzes are dedicated, detected in them the “portly rocking” spirit of the German Ländler, a countrified waltz, rather than that of its more refined urban cousin. That said, the range of expression that Brahms packs into these exquisitely crafted miniatures is nothing short of miraculous.

Pieces for Piano, Op. 119 Composed in 1893; 15 minutes By the early 1890s, Brahms had begun making noises about retiring from composition. As writing another major solo work for the piano was apparently out of the question at that late stage, he produced four sets of short piano pieces instead. The last of these, the Op. 119 Klavierstücke, were composed in the summer of 1893 in the Austrian spa resort of Bad Ischl. Brahms sent the Intermezzo in B Minor to his old flame Clara Schumann as a thinly disguised valentine. He cautioned her, however, that the music was extremely dissonant: “Every bar and every note must be played as if ritardando were indicated, and one wished to draw the melancholy out of each one of them, and voluptuous joy and comfort out of the discords.”

The three Intermezzi in the Op. 119 set are a study in contrasts. The first, in B minor, is indeed harmonically advanced by Brahms’s standards, its cascading arpeggios conjuring a mood of aching tenderness. (Clara, apparently unfazed by the dissonances, praised the music’s “bittersweet” charm.) The second Intermezzo is in a more expansive ABA form, with agitated sections in E-minor flanking a lissome major-key waltz. The CMajor Intermezzo playfully meshes triple and duple meters, while the final Rhapsody evokes the robustly heroic style of Brahms’s youth.

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