Double Concerto in a minor op.102-The cellist Robert Hausmann had actually requested a Cello concerto - but Brahms paired the Cello with a Violin in his 'Double Concerto'. The unusual work has already been available as part of the newBrahms Complete Edition for several years.Using Brahms original Piano reduction Johannes Umbreit has produced a playable Piano setting that optimally renders the colourfulness of the score. The fingerings andbowings for the string parts have been supplied by the experienced soloists Frank Peter Zimmermann and Heinrich Schiff. The orchestral parts based on the Complete Edition are available from Breitkopf & Härtel (PB/OB 16104).
SKU: TM.00507SET
Sol/pf. Trans: Cl 1&2, Hn 1-4, Tpt 1&2.
SKU: TM.00507SC
SKU: BR.OB-3210-27
ISBN 9790004300732. 10 x 12.5 inches.
Johannes Brahms' first Piano Concerto was the fruit of a complex, protracted, and extremely trying creative process. Its origin goes back to a sonata in D minor for two pianos conceived in spring 1854. The impulse for the creation of the main subject was however a shocking event: According to Joseqph Joachim, the theme originated after hearing about Schumanns suicide attempt. A few months earlier, Schumann had revealed Brahms to the musical world in his essay New Paths. In this article, Brahms is extolled as the musician who is called to give expression to the feeling of his times in an ideal fashion. The unusually rapid genesis of the D-minor sonata and its prevailingly dark, monumental mood can be interpreted as an impassioned compositional response to Schumann's suicide attempt. However, the year-long struggle to arrive at the final form of the work should perhaps also be seen in the context of the resounding praise of Schumann's prophetic article. Brahms undoubtly felt a growing inner pressure to live up to the expectations aroused therein.Together with Clara Schumann, Brahms played the three so far existing movements of the sonata, but he was very self-critical. He felt that he had not been able to realize the monumentality he had envisioned, and which Clara Schumann felt, by merely doubling the piano sound. He soon decided to transform the sonata into a symphony (his first orchestral project). However, this idea did not seem to fit his vision either. Only in spring 1855 did he strike upon the definitive solution: a piano concerto. With Brahms as soloist, this concerto premiered in 1859, though he initially had little success. He wrote to Joachim about one of the first performances that the concerto was a brilliant and unmistakable - failure. This hardly surprised Brahms, for he was undoubtedly aware of the newness of the work, which surpassed the expectations of the audience. The work's complex structure and symphonic dimensions, the solo part's rejection of showy, elegant brilliance, and the uniquely Brahmsian orchestral density it maintains throughout; all of these qualities inevitably exasperated audiences at first - until they raised this work to the ranks of the most celebrated concertos of all time.
SKU: BR.OB-16107-27
ISBN 9790004342565. 10 x 12.5 inches.
Brahms' Piano Symphony in the Urtext of the complete editionJohannes Brahms enjoyed a bit of understatement every now and then, and whenever his second piano concerto was the object of discussion, he called it his little concerto - although it was more than clear that, with its four movements (including Scherzo), he was giving his contemporaries something truly symphonic to chew on. The press didn't hesitate long: soon it was being derisively called piano symphony, which, however, did nothing to prevent its popularity. Brahms himself and other pianists played the work everywhere in the 1880s, and the piano reduction was so successful that it had to be reprinted three times within three months after its first printing.The Urtext edition follows the text of the respective volume in the Brahms Complete Edition published in 2013. It takes the first printing of the score as the main source; moreover, both the autograph as well as the printed reduction provided further information with which engraving errors of the first edition could be corrected.
