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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