| Royal Classics |  |
| Disc No: ROY6437 | |
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Brahms had offered his First Piano Concerto to the public in 1859 but that public had rejected it. He waited nearly 20 years before embarking upon another and, like the First, it took some years in the making, being completed in 1881. It is rare to find humour in Brahms's music but personally he had a dry wit, as in the note he wrote to a friend about the new work: 'I have written a quite small piano concerto which has a quite small and delicate scherzo'. In fact, the Concerto is quite vast and, coming after the long first movement, the Sherzo is powerful, challenging for the performer, and very far from being delicate. Opening with a horn theme, the spacious first movement quickly introduces the piano in an exploratory way which soon crystalises into piano flourishes and a grand orchestral statement built on the horn melody. Although passionate at times, the movement is congenial, in contrast to the massive Scherzo that follows. In the Andante Brahms introduces a solo cello alongside the piano to make a tender love duct. Now comes some of that rare Brahmsian musical humour: a playful finale teeming with subtle touches and with a quiet smile at every turn. Beethoven was not the man to bow down before nobility but in the Piano Sonata in E flat he makes an exception. His patron, Archduke Rudolph, left Vienna in May 1809 to escape Napoleon's army. In the first movement of his Sonata Beethoven clearly says 'Lebewohl' ('Farewell') in the opening phrase, and goes into an Allegro in which disquiet implies regret at the loss of valued friend. Continued absence is poignantly conveyed in the middle movement, but in the finale there is an explosion of joy when, after seven months, the Archduke and Beethoven were reunited in Vienna. Robert Dearling. Discontinued |
| Name: Brahms Piano Concerto No.2 | |
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