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56 BRAHMS_COMPLETE SOLO PIANOWORKS
If his œuvre as a whole cannot be fitted into a strict classification, with
pivotal points as clear as they are in, say, Beethoven, the piano works may
be categorisedmore precisely. After the youthful compositions (comprising
the pieces from the Scherzo to the Ballades – it being understood that
‘youthful’ refers only to Brahms’s age at the time, and not to any stylistic
immaturity, as we have seen above), then the ‘technical’ period (which
covers all the major sets of variations), the final opuses, from two distinct
but both very narrow spans of time, make up the last period of his piano
music, contemplative in nature: thirty pieces that no longer come under
the Classical headings of the sonata or the cycle of variations which he
had utilised up to that point (except in the Ballades) but are more closely
related to the Romantic genre piece.
A decade after the publication the Hungarian Dances (and after the
premieres of his first two symphonies), in the summer of 1878, which was
also the year of the Violin Concerto - a summer with a rugged and tender
soul, so characteristic of Brahms - the composer turned once again to his
own instrument.