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This was the first Brahms I ever learned to play. It looked to me like a relatively easy piece, simply because it doesn\u2019t have all that many notes \u2014 but I was wrong: never having played Brahms, I didn\u2019t recognize the difficulty that was there. Brahms doesn\u2019t always divide his music into clear layers of melody and accompaniment; he\u2019ll have bits of melodic thread appearing in different voices, different layers. None of these threads is complete in itself, but they form a complete whole that doesn\u2019t emerge from any single place. Much like Renaissance polyphony, the \u201cforeground\u201d of the music emerges from a delicate interplay of layers.

So yes, not many notes, but this piece turned out to require a great deal of care in fingering and voicing, to give just the right weight to each note, and the right shape to the many parts. After I \u201cgot it\u201d with this one, I found it much easier to work my way into other Brahms. Playing music requires a certain empathy with the composer; it is much like making friends.

Though it proved a bit tricky to learn, it\u2019s certainly not tricky to listen to: the music is pure bliss, and though it passes through many landscape-changing shades of light and dark, nothing breaks the floating bubble between the first note and the last.

\nJohannes Brahms\n
\nIntermezzo Op 116 No 4\n
\nPaul Cantrell,\npiano\n
\n\u266b\nDownload\n(4:40 / 5.8 M)\n