Sunday Classics preview: Brahms in snorting-and-grunting mode

[A]

[B]

[C]


"I'd like to hear you yourself play the scherzo, with its driving power and energy (I can hear you snorting and grunting in it!). No one else would succeed in playing it as I imagine it: agitated without rushing, legato, yet inwardly restless and propulsive."

-- from a letter to Brahms by pianist Elisabeth von Herzogenberg,
who had been playing the composer's new piano-and-cello sonata

by Ken

The music is the third movement of Brahms's Second Cello Sonata in F, Op. 99, and the quote from Elisabeth von Herzogenberg's letter to the composer comes from the program notes for Ian Hobson's 14-concert New York series (which concludes this week) of the complete Brahms solo and chamber works involving the piano. More from the letter and from and about the sonata and the Hobson series in this week's Sunday Classics post.

As the annotator who quoted von Herzogenberg's letter notes, it's "valuable not least for what it tells us about the composer's piano playing." And I thought that you might enjoy listening to tonight's performances "cold," to see how our three very different pianists stack up against our letter-writer's imagining of the way Brahms would have played this music. (Not to worry, the performers will all be identified in a moment.)


WONDERING WHO OUR PIANISTS (AND CELLISTS) ARE?
HERE THEY ARE AGAIN, NOW PROPERLY IDENTIFIED

BRAHMS: Sonata No. 2 for Piano and Cello in F, Op. 99:
iii. Allegro passionato
[A]

Rudolf Serkin, piano; Mstislav Rostropovich, cello. DG, recorded 1982
[B]

Arthur Rubinstein, piano; Gregor Piatigorsky, cello. RCA-BMG, recorded in Hollywood, Oct. 11, 1966
[C]

Philippe Entremont, piano; Herre-Jan Stegenga, cello. Brilliant Classics, recorded in the Netherlands, June 28, 2000


IN THIS WEEK'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

As noted, we'll have more of Elisabeth von Herzogenberg's letter, more from the annotator, more about the Ian Hobson series, and more of the sonata.

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For a "Sunday Classics" fix anytime, visit the stand-alone "Sunday Classics with Ken."