Wiederkehr ans Leben wiederholt: Gerhard Oppitz plays the complete piano music of Brahms, Part II, by Larry Wallach

Johannes Brahms sitting at the piano in the music room of his friends, Richard and Maria Fellinger

Gerhard Oppitz plays the complete piano music of Brahms
(Concerts 3 and 4)

Wednesday, July 25:
Piano Pieces, Op. 118
Paganini Variations
Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79
Piano Pieces, Op. 116

Thursday, July 26:
Piano Pieces, Op. 76
Piano Pieces, Op. 117
Piano Sonata no. 2 in F-sharp minor
Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel, Op. 24

To read Part I, click here.

As it turns out, the impression that Brahms himself was performing his own piano music at Tanglewood this summer proved to be illusory, compounded of the modest and Brahmsian demeanor of the actual performer, German pianist Gerhard Oppitz, his serious and total identification with the voice of the composer, and a certain hypnotic spell cast by his unhesitating progress from work to work, as if to say “and then I wrote…”. Oppitz’s performances showed characteristics that would be easy to ascribe to Brahms himself: a completely unfussy treatment of details to keep attention on the large structural sweep of each composition, of which he maintained a clear and magisterial vision at all times; a coloristic differentiation between secondary harmonic figuration and foregrounded contrapuntal activity; and a refusal to be brilliant simply for the sake of being brilliant. What might have appeared casual or even at times careless was the by-product of this focus on structure. This is not to imply that there was any slighting of expression: Oppitz/Brahms understood that in music this constructed with such profound care and logic, it is the larger shapes rather than the individual moments, however striking, that provide the most powerful and lasting forms of expression.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts!