Piano Pieces

Johannes Brahms’ summer sojourn in 1893 in Bad Ischl was productive. Alongside the pieces op. 118, he also wrote his last cycle of piano pieces, opus 119. The composer wrote to Clara Schumann of the opening work, saying that it was teeming with dissonances and that: “every measure and every note must sound like a ritardando, as if one wanted to suck the melancholy out of each single one, with lust and pleasure out of the aforementioned dissonances!” Yet opus 119 contains something for every mood: No. 3 surprises with its lively and light C major, and the cycle is completed with the defiant rhapsody in E flat major. Our revised edition, based on the Brahms Complete Edition, is an invitation to pianists to rediscover Brahms’ complex cosmos.