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The
coup de foudre
did not spare Schumann’s wife,
herself a virtuoso pianist and inspirational muse, and
Clara was soon to count every bit as much as Robert in
the life and the work of Brahms.
It was to her that he respectfully dedicated the Sonata no.2 in F sharp minor
(op.2, 1852), of which Claudio Arrau once said: ‘The beginning of the F-sharp
minor Sonata is so
incredible
, such a challenging of the world. That alone
should make people, particularly young people, want to play it.’ The finale
ends in a very unexpected – and very intimate – fashion, on a
pianissimo
that
aspires to ecstasy, almost mystical.
If Brahms preferred to present the Sonata no.1 in C major (op.11, 1853 - thus
composed later, and dedicated to the friend who had introduced him to
the Schumanns, the violinist Joseph Joachim) to the publishers as his first
opus number, it is because he found that workmore imposing, with its more
specifically pianistic textures, which at once struck the Schumanns, and its
firstmovementwhich resembles theopeningof Beethoven’s‘Hammerklavier’
as a son resembles his father (but a son with so strong a personality that he
already has a perfectly autonomous identity).
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GEOFFROY COUTEAU