Classical Music | Piano Music

Recorded on 06/05/2013, uploaded on 12/09/2013

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

Johannes Brahms was a composer with a keen sense of and high regard for the past. His study of older music, dating back to the Renaissance, influenced many of his own works—the Chorale Preludes of his last years, his choral motets, or the Handelian vigor that can be found in the finale of his Second Symphony or the seldom-heard Trumphlied, are but a few examples. This knowledge of past music also moved the composer to tackle one of the staple forms of the pianist-composer at the outset of his career: the sonata. Developed at the hands of Mozart and Haydn and immortalized in the works of Beethoven, the sonata was the first large-scale form Brahms actively devoted himself to mastering. At least five were composed while he was still a relatively unknown young composer, of which the three known today are most likely the last of those five. Interestingly, after his three successful attempts, Brahms abandoned the sonata, never to return to it.

Though numbered as his second piano sonata, the Sonata in F-sharp minor was actually the first to be composed and predates much of the C major Sonata by a year. Brahms, keen to make a good first impression, opted for the latter work to be published as his opus 1, realizing it to be the stronger of the two works. The highlight of Brahms’ Second Piano Sonata is the third movement scherzo. Following the 1851 Scherzo in E-flat minor, later published as his opus 4, the third movement showed that even while still a teenager, Brahms had already acquired a mastery of the scherzo idiom and form. The preceding movement, an Andante, is Brahms’ first surviving set of variations. Based on the tune Mir ist leide, attributed to the Minnesinger Kraft von Toggenburg, it also reveals the composer’s penchant for the variation form. The outer movements of the sonata, however, are less impressive, though still are a testament to a burgeoning creative mind. Most notable of them is the finale, which foreshadows the First Symphony by assuming the burden of bearing the architectural weight of the entire work. Yet, the sonata fails to achieve the dramatic resolution of that later creation as it closes with virtuosic flourishes.     Joseph DuBose

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Johannes Brahms   Piano Sonata No. 2 in f-sharp minor

Johannes Brahms displayed his musical talents at an early age, but it was not until he  toured with the esteemed Hungarian violinist Eduard Remenyi, that he gained widespread recognition as a performer and composer.  On this tour he met several established musicians such as Franz Liszt and Joseph Joachim, who gave him a letter of introduction to the Schumann family in Dusseldorf. Robert Schumann recognized the genius and depth of Brahms’ creative mind and published an article in the Neue Zeitschrift fur Musik, in which he proclaimed: “Someone has arrived who is destined to give the highest expression to the spirit of this time; his name is Johannes Brahms.”

He was very aware of the ever present shadow of Beethoven looming over him, and made sure he did not rush his compositional development. The first 10 opus numbers contain mostly works for solo piano and song cycles, allowing him to hone his skills on a smaller scale. He then gradually increased his mastery of instrumentation, and only at age 43 did he feel he was ready to publish his first symphony and first string quartet. 

The second sonata was actually composed prior to the first, but Brahms thought the latter would make for a better inaugural publication. It is dedicated to Clara Schumann, who would remain very close to Brahms until the end of his life. The first movement is a conventional sonata form, with all thematic motives closely related to each other, much like Beethoven. In the second movement, we can already detect Brahms’ love for variation as a compositional and developmental technique, which was to influence Schoenberg some 50 years later. The theme is based on the German Minnesang ‘Mir ist leide’, which also serves as the motive for the traditional scherzo of the third movement. The fourth movement has a rhapsodic introduction in A major, which bears a striking resemblance to the introduction of Beethoven’s third cello sonata also in A major, opus 69. After this opening follows an elaborate sonata form, based on the same theme as the opus 69, ending with an unusual pianissimo at the coda. The lack of a bravura ending may have contributed to the fact that this sonata is not performed as often as it should be.          Steven Vanhauwaert

Courtesy of International Music Foundation.