Scherzo in E flat minor, Op.4

Ballade in D minor, Op.10, No.1

Ballade in B major, Op.10, No.4

Brahms’s early piano music is peculiarly fascinating. Work of the same period in other media - songs, string quartets, perhaps even orchestral music - he firmly suppressed, which is why it is only in pieces like the Scherzo Op.4 and the four Ballades Op.10 that it is possible to trace the creative personality taking shape.

The Scherz0 in E flat minor, written when Brahms was no more than 18, is in fact his earliest surviving work and shows him profoundly under the influence of Liszt. Although his admiration for that composer didn’t last long, he was enthusiastic enough to make a pilgrimage to Weimar in 1853, taking the Scherzo in E flat minor with him. Playing it at sight from the manuscript, Liszt must have been impressed and flattered not only by the demonic quality of the Rasch und feurig (“quick and fiery”) outer section but also by the thematic transformations employed by Brahms to integrate the two slower trio sections with the rest.

Ballade in D minor, Op.10, No.1

Ballade in B major, Op.10, No.4

Brahms’s early piano music is peculiarly fascinating. Work of the same priod i n other media - songs, string quartets, perhaps even orchestral music - he firmly suppressed, which is why it is only in pieces like the Scherzo Op.4 and the four Ballades Op.10 that it is possible to trace the creative personality taking shape.

The Scherz in E flat minor, written when Brahms was nnor more than 18, is in fact his earliest surviving work and shows him profoundly under the influence of Liszt. Although his admiration for that composer didn’t last long, he was enthusiastic enough to make a pilgrimage to Weimar in 1853, taking the Scherzo in E flat minor with him. Playing it at sight from the manuscript, Liszt must have been iimpressed and flattered not only by the demonic quality of the Rasch und feurig (“quick and fiery”) outer section but also by the thematic transformations emplyed by Brahms to integrate the two slower trio sections with the rest.

The Ballades, Op.10, were written at about the same time as Brahms’s far more significant meeting with Robert and Clar Schumann in Düsseldorf later in 1853. There is little evidence of Liszt her - or, indeed, of Chopin: Brahms’s Ballades are less extensive and less wide-rangiing than Chhopin’s and are closer in scale to the comparatively unambitious literary ballad form. The first of them was actually inspired by a traditional Scottish ballad, Edward (by way of Herder’s translation in Stimmen der Völker), the opening lines of which

Why does your brand sae drop wi blude,

Edward, Edward?

determined the shape of the opening theme, the pairs of falling fifths echoing through the piece like the repeated “Edward, Edward” trough the ballad. As the composer confirmed, when he returned to it for his vocal-duet setting of Edward 24 years later, the Ballade in D minor is authentic Brahms. The lovely fourth Ballade in B major, its particularly intimate middle section caressing the melody between the two hands, is almost authentic Schumann.