Program Notes

Johannes Brahms - (b Hamburg, 7 May 1833; d Vienna, 3 April 1897). German composer. The successor to Beethoven and Schubert in the larger forms of chamber and orchestral music, to Schubert and Schumann in the miniature forms of piano pieces and songs, and to the Renaissance and Baroque polyphonists in choral music, Brahms creatively synthesized the practices of three centuries with folk and dance idioms and with the language of mid- and late 19th-century art music. His works of controlled passion, deemed reactionary and epigonal by some, progressive by others, became well accepted in his lifetime

It is generally agreed that Brahms rarely showed extreme emotions in his compositions. The late piano works, which consist of 20 pieces in four sets—Opp. 116, 117, 118, and 119—often divulge agitation and a sense of loss (most were written after the deaths of Brahms' sister Elise and his close friend Elizabeth von Herzogenberg), but almost always inject some opposite feeling into the mix, too, like serenity, joy, or confidence. This Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118, No. 2, is one of his longer and more profound efforts from these sets, and is considered by many an irreplaceable masterpiece which quietly encompasses a world that is in turns nostalgic, mysterious, and melancholy. Every moment of it is intensely personal and almost heartbreakingly beautiful. Brahms subjects his themes to inversion and to redistribution within the texture; deft touches of imitation, double counterpoint, and cannon.

Specifically, it begins with one of those quirky Brahmsian melodies: while one might well assert its flowing lyricism and serene manner would be equally at home in the lieder genre, its harmonic quirkiness—masterly quirkiness, albeit—would strongly test that contention, and the graceful but peculiar leap that comes on the sixth note of the main theme is clearly better suited to the keyboard realm. That said, the music, especially in the outer sections, is still songful and lushly Romantic, its main lines flowing and stately, its harmonies warm in their shifting and ever-imaginative turns. The middle section features another lovely theme, but its mood divulges a measure of tension, if not agitation, as it progresses less assuredly. Yet, before the music can erupt or turn darker, it yields back to the lovely main theme.

Perhaps Clara Schumann, a close personal friend of Brahms, then in her seventies (and not in her prime as a pianist any more), said it best when in 1893 she shared her impression of the work: “Everyday my most beautiful hour is the one I owe to you […] the treasure you have given me in your new pieces constitute my only musical joy […] And then there is the A major (no. 2), and its middle movement in F-Sharp minor with its lovely medley of melodies […] how full of profound feeling and how dreamy it all is…”

Viktor Stepanovych Kosenko - (b St Petersburg, 12/24 Nov 1896; d Kiev, 3 Oct 1938). Ukrainian composer and pianist. In 1918 he graduated from the St. Petersburg Conservatory where he studied with Nikolay Sokolov (composition) and Irina Miklashevskaya (piano). In the period from 1918–28 he lived in Zhitomir, teaching at the music school; from 1929 he lived in Kiev, teaching at the Lysenko Music Institute (1929–34) and at the conservatory (1934–8), where he ran the classes in piano, chamber music and analysis. He performed as a soloist and as an ensemble player; he was awarded the order of the Workers' Red Banner (1938). His works are Romantic in style and rely in particular on the Russian traditions of Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, and Scriabin.

The Prelude in E-flat minor, Op. 2 No. 1, is the first of four preludes composed between the years 1911 and 1915 (several years before completing his studies in St. Petersburg). All four preludes were set in minor keys, however only the first was ever published. Though still quite young and trying to “find his voice” as a composer, the harmonic influence of Alexander Scriabin’s Second Period is evident (believed to span the years 1903-1907, this segment of Scriabin’s output is considered the end of his middle and late romantic approach and use of functional tonality), not just in its chromaticism, but also, and more so, in the extension of and decreased function of unstable intervals and dissonant harmonies. The simple “Le-Sol-Me-Do-Do-Se” motive is stated, restated, transposed and transformed, never quite resolving (as we would expect). Indeed, what would normally serve as a transient moment of tension and instability becomes an extended “painful” but colorful and beautiful point of arrival in and of itself! A final quiet restatement of the motive, this time flowing to the tonic, concludes the prelude.

SourcesGrove Music Online c/o Oxford Music Online – Viktor Kosenko - V. Dovzhenko: V.S. Kosenko (Kiev, 1951), P. Stetsyuk: Viktor Kosenko (Kiev, 1974), V.S. Kosenko: spogady. Lysty [Reminiscences. Letters] (Kiev, 1975), O. Oliynik: Fortepianna tvorchist′ V.S. Kosenko [The piano works of V.S. Kosenko] (Kiev, 1977), O. Oliynik: V. Kosenko (Kiev, 1989), Yelena Zin′kevich.

Grove Music Online c/o Oxford Music Online – Johannes Brahms - George S. Bozarth, Walter Frisch, Grove

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