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57
GEOFFROY COUTEAU
The Eight
Klavierstücke
op.76 bear the misleading titles ‘intermezzo’
or ‘capriccio’, but possess neither the function nor the mood of those
established genres; instead, with their meditative, sometimes elegiac
quality (the intermezzos) and their vehement, often passionate character
(the capriccios), they revert to the atmosphere of northern legend, imbued
with fantastical mystery, that had been dear to Brahms since his youth.
The Two Rhapsodies op.79 (1879) pursue this return to an earlier inspiration
and may even be situated in a direct line of descent from the Ballades op.10.
As in the case of op.76, the title ‘rhapsody’ is misleading: in fact, these too are
ballades, which borrow their structure and character from the scherzo genre
(and notably from the scherzos of Beethoven and Chopin). One recognises in
them the temperament of that ‘Kreisler Junior’ who ‘with the boisterousness
of youth, would run up the stairs, knock at my door with both fists, and,
without waiting for a reply, burst into the room’.
The last four cycles (opp.116 and 117 from 1892 and opp.118 and 119 from 1893)
constituteat onceapianistic testament andaquintessenceof the inspiration
of his entire œuvre. Brahms even referred to some of them as ‘cradle-songs
of my sorrows’.