Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Started by BachQ, April 07, 2007, 03:23:22 AM

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Opus131

Quote from: Mandryka on December 15, 2023, 01:15:48 PMBusoni made transcriptions for one piano which Paul Jacobs recorded - he said they were the most difficult thing he ever played.

I'm not a keyboard player so i wouldn't know how hard they are to play but i think with late Brahms in general it is the melodic complexity or density that makes it difficult.

There's just SO much going on in his music:


There's a similar degree of melodic density in those chorales as well:


The only caveat about those chorales is that we don't know the actual order as Brahms died before he could publish them himself. Hard to say if the set is even finished.

atardecer

Quote from: Opus131 on December 16, 2023, 02:17:30 AMI'm not a keyboard player so i wouldn't know how hard they are to play but i think with late Brahms in general it is the melodic complexity or density that makes it difficult.

There's just SO much going on in his music

That is a pretty good description. Also Brahms tends to use a similar idea in a multitude of different ways, creating passages that have similarities but are moving around a lot through different chords and keys, with the voices changing in subtle ways. It's generally challenging to play and also challenging to memorize and internalize.
"In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyze and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest." - Fernando Pessoa

LKB

Quote from: Florestan on December 15, 2023, 02:07:37 AMI've never met Albeniz yet he was clearly lying when he claimed he studied with Liszt. I've never met Colin Powell yet he was clearly lying when he claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. I've never met Putin yet he lies all the time.


I must defend General Powell here. He was not making stuff up, he was making a case that he believed to be true, based on inaccurate intelligence reported to him and others within the Bush administration. So, " lying " isn't the word l would use, as he wasn't intentionally misleading in his address to the UN.
Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen...

Spotted Horses

Quote from: Opus131 on December 16, 2023, 02:17:30 AMI'm not a keyboard player so i wouldn't know how hard they are to play but i think with late Brahms in general it is the melodic complexity or density that makes it difficult.

Probably there is a distinction between being hard to play the notes, and hard to make the music emerge from the notes.
There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind. - Duke Ellington

lordlance

I heard two Brahms 1s in quick succession:



This is from the 1970s and is not to be confused with his cycle from the '50s. There an excellent write up comparing both cycles that can be found here

Overall the performance is a let-down. It's not bad I suppose. Technically fine. Recorded well. Just lacking excitement or energy so necessary for a Brahms 1. Feels underwhelming. This combined with the Coriolan Overture from roughly the same period lead me to believe Boult was past his prime by the time stereo came around or at least his later EMI recordings much like Walter and Klemperer's stereo stuff.

Onwards to Asahina with Osaka from 1994:


I was pleasantly surprised by this performance actually. It didn't get bogged down by "stately" tempi as Asahina is wont to do in most of his performances. The timpani being highlighted was also a lot of fun for me personally and at certain times I picked out some background string writing I hadn't heard before. Overall I shall revisit this later.
If you are interested in listening to orchestrations of solo/chamber music, you might be interested in this thread. Feel free to contribute and make the list grow!

Mandryka

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen

Herman


Florestan

Quote from: Jan BrokkenLike everyone else, I associate Johannes Brahms mainly with Hamburg

Everyone else?...

Quote from: Jan BrokkenAfter all, who was more Viennese than Haydn?

Schubert, Johann Strauss I and II, Joseph Lanner.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind. — Rossini

Madiel

I don't think he understands what Vienna was at the time.

Having visited the city, it didn't take long for me to realise many of the buildings and monuments were doing the same sort of display as a centre of power that I'd previously seen in Paris. Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms didn't shuffle off to Vienna by coincidence.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

atardecer

Some of the article was interesting, some of it kind of annoying. The guy read some books about Brahms and now speaks as though he pretty much knew him, and assumes to know pretty much everything about his life (and apparently everyone else knows all about these things too - it's common knowledge). He speaks as though Brahms and him are practically BFF, and so its no big deal to make light of him.

Making light of oneself is usually not offensive, doing it to someone else you never met based on second hand sources you read too much into, not good form.


"In this metallic age of barbarians, only a relentless cultivation of our ability to dream, to analyze and to captivate can prevent our personality from degenerating into nothing or else into a personality like all the rest." - Fernando Pessoa

vers la flamme

I enjoyed it, but then I enjoy reading any scrap I can about Brahms.


Madiel

The title is more than enough to put me off.
I am now working on a discography of the works of Vagn Holmboe. Please visit and also contribute!

SonicMan46

Solo Piano Music - some 'modern' cycles - I've been culling these for a while and now own the first two below, i.e. Geoffroy Couteau in a 6-disc box and Jonathan Plowright on 5 separate CDs; a third recent 6-disc box is with Barry Douglas which I've listen to a few performances on Spotify and enjoyed.

I'm not aware of any other 'new' cycles by any other pianist and am happy w/ the two owned - don't believe I need another but Douglas would be a consideration.  For those interested, there are several attachments - one on Plowright which is thorough; the other on Couteau & Douglas, unfortunately I could find only a few decent comments about Couteau on Amazon but the reviewers seem to have some good knowledge - the Douglas MusicWeb review is also excellent for those who might want to explore him further.  Dave