In the Hands
Paul Cantrell’s music
blog & podcast
Piano music old and new from a devoted amateur,
all free to listen to, download, and share.

Brahms Intermezzo 116.4

Something sweet today: a bit of magic from Brahms.

Intermezzo Op 116 No 4

These late Brahms pieces — same with the first recording in this blog — are amazing to me as a composer. They sound lush, but the writing is actually quite spare and elemental. The structures are at once formal and organic, like Bach preludes. And the incredible emotional intimacy, their sense of being so personal, is like no other music I know.

This was the first Brahms I ever learned to play. It looked to me like a relatively easy piece, simply because it doesn’t have all that many notes — but I was wrong: never having played Brahms, I didn’t recognize the difficulty that was there. Brahms doesn’t always divide his music into clear layers of melody and accompaniment; he’ll have bits of melodic thread appearing in different voices, different layers. None of these threads is complete in itself, but they form a complete whole that doesn’t emerge from any single place. Much like Renaissance polyphony, the “foreground” of the music emerges from a delicate interplay of layers.

So yes, not many notes, but this piece turned out to require a great deal of care in fingering and voicing, to give just the right weight to each note, and the right shape to the many parts. After I “got it” with this one, I found it much easier to work my way into other Brahms. Playing music requires a certain empathy with the composer; it is much like making friends.

Though it proved a bit tricky to learn, it’s certainly not tricky to listen to: the music is pure bliss, and though it passes through many landscape-changing shades of light and dark, nothing breaks the floating bubble between the first note and the last.

Comments

Joel

Lovely.

And I liked the commentary on this one, too; writing about music may be like building about dance, but it’s still always fascinating to find out why a performer loves a piece of music. It adds that extra sense of shared experience, if you hear the same things in the piece, or something to talk about if you don’t. (In this case, I think you got it exactly.) Looking forward to more…

Joel
D

Hearing the Intermezzos one after the other is like a brief visit home from you!

I agree with Joel: for all the danger of talking about music, what you said both helps me listen a bit better and hear what you love in these pieces.

D
Julienne Wight

Just listening to the Brahms - beautiful. I saw the reference in the Guardian online to your blog and thought I’d have a look - I’d never thought of blogs being used in his way. What an absolute delight!
Kind regards,
julienne
Melbourne, Australia

Julienne Wight
Justin Nash

I agree with the previous comments. Talking about music can become innocuous when the writer indulges in his own experiences, aka David Dubal “Art of the Piano” sometimes writes things like, “his pianissimo was like dew on morning grass.” And I’m not kidding. However, when a writer does, as you did, write with the sole intent of informing the listener, cueing them in on possibly some of the secrets of the composition, this can only be helpful.
Good job and nice website. Go Brahms!

Justin Nash
Dave Becker

Nicely done Paul. Sounds great. I played 117-3 as a kid. My Jazz teacher always had us play a classical along with the jazz standards. Dave

Richard Riley

Magnificent! Your piano is wonderful and if there is a better sounding recording
of a piano, I would like to hear it.

Richard Riley
Julieanne Rabens

I agree the piano tone is quite marvelous! I enjoyed your phrasing. You really let the music breath in the right spots, and become dramatic in a clear and focused manner. The layers come across with fine color and clarity. You will have to tell me more about how you achieve such a high quality recording.

Paul

Julieanne: I have published a fairly detailed description of how I make the recordings, though the section on mastering is out of date.

Paul
p

wow, very nice choice to play, and nice playing, too… you’ve won a new podcast listener over here

p
Michael Zygmunt

Dear Paul,

Thank you so much for taking the time and making the effort to share what you have learned from the tedious task of trying to capture the sound of a quality accoustic piano. I have a Hamburg Steinway also in a small living room. Your advice will prove invaluable. A couple of questions. When choosing microphones did you try any higher end(as far as price) microphones such as Neumann U-87 or any thing like that? Or are there any other mics you would have preferred but thought the price was prohibitive. Also, “experts” always say you should use a matched pair of microphones. Did you try this and get unsatisfactory results? Thanks for any input.

Sincerely,

Michael Zygmunt

Michael Zygmunt
Paul

Michael – I didn’t try any really high-end microphones. I was trying to keep it cheap, and was getting results so satisfactory with these $400-500 mics that I didn’t feel the need to search at the higher end. I’d love to try some AKGs, Neumann, Blue, etc., but if I had the money for something really high-end, I’d probably just get the piano tuned more often, and do some soundproofing. Both of those are bigger issues for my sound right now.

Honestly, I think people tend to get just a hair too hung up on mics at the expense of positioning, mastering, and instrument issues. Mics matter, but past a certain level of quality, other things make a much bigger difference.

I was not able to get results I liked using more tradition symmetric / X-Y / ORTF-like approaches. I was getting things from each of the two mics I selected that I wasn’t getting from any other, and was very pleased with the results of mixing them. The wild stereo image it creates certainly isn’t for everyone, though.

Paul
Nolingo

Hey man, i have to do a work for Wiman a teacher here in Argentina, would you tell me about the parts, about the form…

Nolingo
Paul

Nolingo: The form is free; it does not have a name. Are you thinking of learning to play it, or are you supposed to analyze it for your teacher?

Paul
CMH

Beautiful beautiful beautiful……I could spend hours on this site. Thank you for sharing such wonderful & uplifting music.

Chopin particularly is my favorite and he would be honored I’m sure the way his pieces were masterfully played.

Best wishes.

CMH
Jacob

It’s amazing how well all the note’s volumes are
even. Beautiful! The hammer thumps were quiet also.
I loved it!

Jacob
gout

Bonjour
i am french compositor and j said you merci beaucoup
pascal

gout
Paul

Bonjour Pascal! Merci beaucoup pour y visiter!

Paul
Daniel

A little late to the party, but I’ve been trying my hand at recording grand pianos for the past few weeks and your recording method was a great read. The tones you’ve got here are wonderful, and I’ll definitely try incorporating some of your methods. Only downside is that as a pianist of 20 years the stereo image on this recording makes me feel like my head’s squashed sideways!

Daniel
Lynda Irvine

Love the sound. I am a piano teacher and have been trying to lean how to record myself and my students for the last couple of years. Will have to research all the stuff in your article so I understand what it means and then give it a go.

Lynda Irvine
Theron White

Thank you for leading me into a rediscovery of a piece I attempted 50 years ago. It is not one for the impatient with adagio, for at a faster tempo, the hemiolas and hemiola effects are lost. Melodically, it is mutifaceted and haunting. This is a piece not often performed. The only other recording I have is Glenn Gould’s. They compare well.

Theron White
Shane Phoner

Wonderful rendition. i love the depth of silence you were able to achieve between notes for the more dramatic portions. and also the clarity when the music came into crescendo. i am trying to turn my office into a recording studio for my music but am having trouble with sound bleed. i will definitely check out your write up.