“Schwesterlein” from Deutsche Volkslieder (1894)

“Och Moder” from Deutsche Volkslieder (1894)

“Walpurgisnacht” Op.75 No.3 (1877-8)

When he completed his collection of arrangements of 49 German folk songs in 1894 Brahms remarked - surprisingly for a composer who had achieved as much as he had - “It is the first time that I look back with tenderness on what I have produced.” Certainly, while the authenticity of much of his material, drawn largely from the two-volume Deutsche Volkslieder of Kretschmer and Zuccalmaglio, is open to question, his affection for it is not. With the most modest of means, he created the most telling of effects, as in “Schwesterlein” with its subtle change in accompaniment in the last two stanzas. And, as in the Low German “Och Moder, ich well en Ding han,” he let the comedy speak for itself. The “Walpurgisnacht” duet is comedy of a quite different order. With its deliberately overwritten, dramatically orchestral piano part it could almost, as the Walküre-like writing for the two voices seems to confirm, be a Wagnerian parody.