Brahms for Piano and Trio

This week, we celebrate the music of Johannes Brahms, often called the “third B,” along with Bach and Beethoven. 

Johannes Brahms, who lived from 1833 to 1897, has been described as “a classical composer born too late.”  Although he lived during the Romantic period, he remained faithful to some of the “older” forms of the Classical period, such as variations, fugues, canons – using them as the basis for his Romantic expressiveness and more “modern” melodies, harmonies and rhythms.

Our first selection this week is Variations on a Theme of Paganini, Book II. A bit unlike other Brahms’ compositions with its highly virtuosic sections, the work was inspired by the last of the legendary violinist’s 24 Caprices for Solo Violin.  Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 has been the theme for variations by at least a dozen composers, and some consider it the most difficult solo violin piece ever written.

Rounding out the first half is another solo piano work, the first intermezzo from Brahms’ Three Intermezzi, Opus 117. The work is among dozens of solo piano pieces Brahms wrote during the last several years of his life and after he had told those close to him that he planned to quit composing. Brahms once called his Three Intermezzi “cradle songs of my sorrows.” Musicologist Harvey Sachs called Brahms’ late-in-life collection of solo piano pieces “stunning, intimately expressive gems.”

Featured on the second half is the Trio in B Major, Op. 8, which Brahms composed while in his early 20s and rewrote over 30 years later. The four-movement trio alternates between major and minor keys and between vigorous virtuosic and more mellow, soulful movements.  One program notes writer called the third movement adagio “soulful poetry in the very best sense.” A touch of Hungarian folk music is present in the fourth movement, reflecting the influence of Brahms’ two Hungarian-born violinist friends, as well as the influx of a large number of Hungarian immigrants to Germany during his youth and young adulthood.