Event

Program:

Johannes Brahms

Three Intermezzi Op 117

Six Pieces Op118
. Intermezzo
. Intermezzo
. Balada
. Intermezzo
. Romance
. Intermezzo

Four Pieces Op119
. Intermezzo
. Intermezzo
. Intermezzo
. Rapsodia

Johannes Brahms (1833 – 1897) Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. In his lifetime, Brahms’s popularity and influence were considerable. Brahms is often considered both a traditionalist and an innovator. His music is firmly rooted in the structures and compositional techniques of the Classical masters. Brahms aimed to honour the «purity» of these venerable «German» structures and advance them into a Romantic idiom, in the process creating bold new approaches to harmony and melody. While many contemporaries found his music too academic, his contribution and craftsmanship have been admired. The diligent, highly constructed nature of Brahms’s works was a starting point and an inspiration for a generation of composers. Within his meticulous structures is embedded, however, a highly romantic nature. Brahms maintained a classical sense of form and order in his works, in contrast to the opulence of the music of many of his contemporaries. Thus, many admirers (though not necessarily Brahms himself) saw him as the champion of traditional forms and «pure music», as opposed to the «New German» embrace of programme music.

Brahms’ personal views tended to be humanistic and skeptical, though one of his influences was undoubtedly the Bible as rendered in German by Martin Luther. On his religious views, Brahms has been described as an agnostic and a humanist.