Brahms - Variations For Piano Complete

SKU: BR.EB-9450

ISBN 9790004189276. 9 x 12 inches.

It is quite amazing that the piano works of the English composer Ethel Smyth had remained unpublished until 2003. All of them were written during her Leipzig study years after 1877, a period that Ethel Smyth herself described as the happiest time of her life. In Leipzig, she met such musical giants as Brahms, Clara Schumann, Dvorak, Grieg and Tchaikovsky. It should come as no surprise that these encounters left stylistic traces in Ethel Smyth's piano oeuvre.Smyth wrote the three piano sonatas in 1877, yet they are stylistically diverse: Smyth raced through a kind of musico-historical evolution. Her point of departure was Haydn and Mozart, who clearly inspired her sonata in C major. It was followed by the impassionate sonata in C sharp minor, which was inspired by the actress Marie Geistinger. The two-movement fragment in D major, reflecting Ethel Smyth's admiration for Brahms, concludes the sonatas.Most of the other piano pieces borrow their atmosphere and titles from Baroque models (dance movements, genre pieces) and are technically undemanding. They have been arranged in this edition in order of progressive difficulty.

It is quite amazing that the piano works of the English composer Ethel Smyth had remained unpublished to this day. She wrote all of these pieces during her years of study in Leipzig, after 1877.

SKU: BR.EB-9440

ISBN 9790004189177. 9 x 12 inches.

The two sonatas of Johannes Brahms's op. 120 are widely hailed as crowning points of the repertoire for clarinet and piano. Moreover, in the version for viola and piano arranged by Brahms himself, they rank among the most frequently played viola works of the 19th century. They far surpass in compositional substance the relatively few original sonatas written for these instrumentations during the same period.Of the two fellow works, the Sonata No. 2 in E flat major is the more accessible. Diverging from the classical-romantic tradition, Brahms used the key of E flat major here not to express the heroic or monumental, but to obtain lyrical, chiefly restrained characterizations. The serenade-like beauty of the principal theme, which opens the sonata, has always been particularly admired. In his review of the world premiere, the renowned Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick, a friend of Brahms's, raves with the words it was as if it had fallen from the Heavens. The closing set of variations also follows with gentle gracefulness this lyrical character. However, the middle movement, with its tempestuous outer sections in E flat minor and the hymnic trio in B major provides a passionate and serious contrast, which allows the flanking idyll to unfold its beauties all the more insistently.