Johannes Brahms, Sonata in F minor, op.5

Brahms felt that "to compose a long adagio is the most difficult of all." By adagio, he means "slow movement," and I think he was right. It's hard to keep a listener's gears turning with original material for more than a few minutes.

Brahms revered Beethoven — Beethoven's success in the symphony and string quartet genres made Brahms petrified at the prospect of releasing some of his own — so it's not unlikely that Brahms's observation was a direct reference to his fellow German. Any slow movement coming from Beethoven's later years was terrific (the Hammerklavier piano sonata's adagio [performances of which push the 20-minute mark] and the cavatina from the op. 130 string quartet are good examples; bring a sword if you plan to disparage them to a critic).

Brahms's third piano sonata was completed when he was 20 years old — pre-beard. The sonata is unique for its five movements. Four is the conventional maximum, and I guess one could argue that it is a conventional, early-Romantic sonata, with a strange little piece squeezed in between the quick scherzo and the finale.

The andante espressivo I've recorded is really the center of the sonata. Performance times can flirt with 15 minutes. I think mine's around 12. In any case, it doesn't seem that long, which I guess is the beauty of it. Alfred Brendel, with characteristic eloquence, described the movement as a musical orgasm (is that why it doesn't seem so long? [I'm sorry, that was too easy, but still very bad]).

Brahms was a staunch believer in music for the sake of music — called "absolute music" — that is to say, the idea that music shouldn't necessarily tell a story or do anything that ties it down to anything as vulgar as language. There was practically a war between he and Wagner on this principle alone — you were either a Brahmsian or a Wagnerite (or you didn't care). So what's notable about the andante espressivo is the epigraph he affixed to the top of the manuscript:

Der Abend dämmert, das Mondlicht scheint,
Da sind zwei Herzen in Liebe vereint
Und halten sich selig umfagen.

Unfortunately, the German makes that C.O. Sternau stanza all but unreadable. So here it is in English:

Twilight falls, the moonlight shines,
Two hearts are united in love,
And keep themselves in bliss enclosed.

Notice a pattern? Whatever else the two hearts are doing, they have a dialogue around the 2:40 mark. Also note the short-short-short-long motif at around 8:13. It's sprinkled throughout the entire sonata, and is thought to be an homage to Beethoven (imitation is flattery, right?).

I played the whole sonata for my senior recital at N.Y.U., and hope to get the other movements up eventually as well. Sorry in advance for wrong notes; this baby's too long to re-record.


Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)
Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5
Composed 1853

II. Andante espressivo

mp3 | score | note on recordings