21 / 64
FLORIAN NOACK 21
Can we start with your transcription of the four
Volkslieder
by Brahms?
I found these folksongs very appealing for their often narrative atmosphere (as in
the third,
Gunhilde
) and the way they stick in your memory. It was very hard to limit
myself to just four
Volkslieder
out of the corpus of forty-nine. All his life, Brahms had
strong affinities with music of folk origins, and his own compositions were often
influenced by them, just as he puts his personal stamp on these songs with small
but easily perceptible touches.
It was a tough assignment to arrange them for solo piano. To suggest a certain
narrative element (the music is repeated, but the text changes with each reprise
of the tune), I tried to vary the ornamentation at each return of the theme, even
though we know that, in this type of music, even tiny variations can deform the
spirit of a piece that seems so ‘simple’. It was quite a challenge, and it took me a
long time to arrange the accompaniment.