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brahms is complicated

I love Brahms. There are no two ways about it – I unapologetically adore listening to and performing the music of Brahms. I love practicing Brahms – because to be able to bring off a good performance of Brahms, one must be aware of the fact that Brahms is as much about what he doesn’t write as what he does write. Interpreting Brahms’ music is a high-wire act of managing expressions of the deepest emotion that coincide with being held at arm’s length. Brahms, is, in a word, human.

I just had the pleasure of reading a blog post by pianist Jeremy Denk, who describes the mechanics (and emotions) of Brahms brilliantly – I’ll share it here with you now – and its impact is heightened by the fact that the first portion of the post is a hilarious description of his interactions with patrons at a post-concert reception.

On the patio, I wished myself away to a place in the Brahms Clarinet Trio, which is not a place and has no patio.

Let’s go there, you and I, to the 3rd movement, where Brahms, after all the Beethovenian Bother, after all the years and years of working out motives and teasing out abstruse musical thoughts, seems to admit without regret that there’s nothing better or purer than a waltz. It’s all there, the easy phrases, flowing one to the other, sighing, growing/blossoming like flowers.

What can you say about that? Brahms says.

Having written a delicious charming wistful waltz would seem to be self-evident. But here, in the coda, we’ve waltzed, we’ve ländlered, we’ve danced through time, and now—Brahms says—this is what I have to say about waltzing, this is what I’ve learned and actually there is only a short time to say it now, because the end of the movement (or death or night) is coming and there won’t be time to say anything anymore. Compressing or compressed—it’s hard to know which, either confined by the pressure of having to say before it’s too late or simply because what he has to say is by its very nature distilled—Brahms utters this last best thing.

He slows the tempo down. The slowing seems to mean listen closely. These notes (he says) are not going to be easy, simple, they will not flow in easy threes like the others, but they have something to say about the others too.

And then he folds everything in an embrace. He heads out to the edges of the keyboard, hugging all possible other pitches between widespread hands. For a moment the embrace is major-ish, (D-F#-A-C#), but only for those couple bars, paradise bars that can’t last, then F-sharp becomes F-natural, world of difference, and the beneficent embrace becomes tinged with sadness, like a wave of sadness, and then, the sadness having broken the embrace, we come slowly down the scale, A, G#, F#, E, D, C#, down the sixth (quintessential waltz-interval, summing everything up while bidding it farewell), each note to be played as the one you never want to leave behind. You can’t do better to express in musical notes how a person reluctantly leaves a hug, having not quite accepted departure and distance.

Read the entire post here.

One reply on “brahms is complicated”

I’ve attempted the Clarinet trio a time or two.  Its not easy under the hand of an amateur, but pleasant to the ear under the hand of a pro.  

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