V. Capriccio. Agitato, ma non troppo Presto

Who is Johannes Brahms? The last of the romantics or the fi rst of the decadents? A priest of tradition or, in Arnold Schoenberg’s opinion, a “progressive” musician? The standard bearer of the solid German bourgeoisie, or the man full of regret? Shall we rely on the words that Jorge Luis Borges dedicates to him, describing him as “fi re and crystal”? If each of these defi nitions has some truth in it, it explains why there are so many different reactions to his music and confi rms the richness and complexity of a character of the highest order. Let us reread Nietzsche in The Case of Wagner : “Brahms is touching as long as he remains intimate or when he mourns himself; he becomes cold and alien to us as soon as he makes himself heir to the classics…”; and then: “... his most typical character remains nostalgia.” The youthful Ballades, Op. 10, which appear to be written by a profoundly pessimistic and prematurely aged man, tell me that, beyond the formidable doctrine that any Brahmsian work communicates to us, Nietzsche had hit the nail on the head: the most personal note of Brahms’s character lies in the Rückblick, the gaze turned back. Once the youthful impulses of the three Piano sonatas and the Concerto, Op. 15 had died down, considering the Variations on a Theme of Paganini a chapter in itself, all the Hamburg composer’s music tends towards introspection, sometimes serene, but more often plunged into darkness. The last Intermezzo of Op. 118, a much more sincere testament than the Rhapsody of Op. 119, which sounds rather like an essay in obligatory rhetoric, reveals to us how empty and godless Brahms’s sky is. Yet in Op. 76, a cycle of pieces sadly neglected by successful pianists, the sky still shows some fl ashes of light and serenity, albeit veiled in melancholy. The Klavierstücke, Op. 76 are the point of greatest balance achieved between free poetic research and never neglected formal organisation. This balance proves to be a valuable path of knowledge for probing Brahms’s personality. As with any of his compositions, neither the fi rst nor the second approach is suffi cient to comprehend the extraordinary richness of the tale; each time one returns to reason about his music, one discovers that one is still on the road and never arrived at a defi nitive goal. Very few musicians offer such a wide range of interpretative viewpoints: that is why I would say with Borges not “fi re and crystal” but “fi re or crystal”.