Brahms op117/3

[pianowelsh]

Hi guys have any of you played this austere work

[krenske]

Yes but i wouldnt describe it as "austere".

Id have to say its my favourite brahms, even better than that lovely 118

[pianowelsh]

maybe bleak then? those 8ves are not warm and lush if you see what I mean its quite withdrawn and 'desolate' maybe? anyway Your opinions please about technical musical or interpretive issues. Its a fascinating piece!

[paris]

i'm playing it currently. very difficult to make legato without pedal with those octaves in left hand

[pianowelsh]

my teacher suggests some fingering which means alternating the 8ve so not so tight. I don't see why you couldn't use some pedal in the opening - im sure its allowed but maybe not the full depth of the pedal?

[rodrk352]

   "Austere," "bleak," "mournful," yes, all those descriptions fit this piece. It is, as the Germans say, full of "sehnsucht," longing. The melody comes in sotto voce, hushed. To me it sounds like a prayer-- I think of a convocation of monks, their faces concealed behind hooded robes. The second section, dolce, sounds like a fleeting memory of happier times.
    Of these works Brahms said that even one listener is too many. It's meant to be played at home, not in the concert hall, where crashing applause after the last bar would be out of place, like the obtrusive sound of people applauding a prayer.

[pianowelsh]

Oh dear - i hope in a way that someone does applaud but i dont mid if they wait a bit because i agree with you that to break the atmosphere would kind of spoil it they leave an inprint on your memory these pieces - there really quite searching. did you play the other two in the set?

[rodrk352]

The first piece is a cradle song. The theme always reminds me of a Christmas carol,  "The First Noel". "The first Noel the angels did say in search of poor shepherds in fields where they lay."

At the top of the score is an epigraph, two lines from a Scottish Shepherd's folk song.

I have trouble playing the second part, getting the timing right. It is molte expressivo, and the sound is supposed to rise and fall. The soft breathing of a baby? That's a stretch, but in any case the passage takes practice. I basically murmur it, because playing it too loud would be out of place in a cradle song. 

The second piece sounds like a dark and wistful love song, a piece of nostalgia like Grieg's lyric piece where he rewrote a waltz from his early 20's at the end of his life. The piece sounds like an extended sigh, until the arpeggios cease and there's a fermata. Then a second theme arrives that throbs like a declaration of love. We hear the same theme at the end, another "Ich liebe dich," and then darkness again.

The third intermezzo, as I implied before, sounds to me like monks chanting a Requiem. So we get the three stages of life in the Opus 117: birth, romance, and death. I hope you get plenty of applause at the end of it