Brahms Intermezzo 117.2 (remastered)
Ahoy there. It’s been a while! I’ve been busy. It’s a sad fact of life that I have bills to pay, and in spite of the tremendous generosity of some of this podcast’s listeners, a whole year’s worth of donations to In the Hands don’t even cover a month’s rent. So, I’ve been working — which is not entirely a bad thing: it’s a good job, I like the other people, and I’m working on interesting stuff … but it’s just amazing how much time a job takes! Forty hours a week is a lot.
Anyway, having settled in to the new schedule of this job, solved my car woes, completed another successful Keys Please, and done some traveling (I went to Québec and practiced my French!), I’m now turning my attention back to my poor, neglected site. To get things started again, here’s an old recording freshly remastered with the new process.
This is a late Brahms intermezzo. (Regular readers know how much I love that!) As I wrote before, it’s a wonderfully ambiguous piece. I suppose not everybody might think of ambiguity as being a compliment or a desirable thing, but I do. One of music’s magical abilities is to be ambiguous in the way that life is ambiguous, that the moment-to-moment experience of consciousness is ambiguous. We have a very natural desire to understand music, to try to figure out what it “means” and what we’re supposed to think about it. Music, however, doesn’t like to be pigeonholed that way. In real life, we don’t experience emotions one at a time, or in black and white — we usually make sense of them in retrospect, finding names and narratives only as we look back on experience. Music works that way as well, and gives us a way of distilling and becoming comfortable with all the confusingly multiple moment-to-moment ebb and flow of our minds and hearts. It is a way of looking back on our own experience without flattening it the way ordinary words can. It’s often hard to say even whether a piece is basically happy or sad — and that is a wonderful thing if you embrace it.
Certainly embracing it is certainly necessary in this piece. It’s hard to say exactly what it is, or what it’s about, or to name how it feels, but the raw experience of it — if we don’t try to name it — is wonderful.
Johannes Brahms
Intermezzo Op 117 No 2
Download (5:22 / 6.4 M)
Next up, I’ll be sharing some excerpts from February’s Keys Please, which will be a fun change of pace for In the Hands. There will even be instruments other than piano; brace yourselves!
Hi Paul,
I liked very much your interesting comment regarding ambiguous versus understandable music. However, I do think that both performers and listeners should understand what the music is saying, where we are and where are we going, the goal and the path of every piece/phrase, although, as in this Brahms Intermezzo, this could be a difficult task.
I enjoy very much your web&playing! Keep posting your repertoire!
//pol
Hi Paul,
Your rendition of this piece is wonderful as is all of your Brahms recordings. I do like the addition of the new audio logo as well.
I was so pleased to find a new podcast from you. I have much enjoyed listening to your playing. I produce some pretty amateur podcasts for people who are learning English - hope I can include a short bit of your music in a future episode. I play the violin - orchestral concert next week of music by Bernstein, Aaron Copeland and others with indecent ideas about how far up the E string it is reasonable to play. Best wishes.
A double remastering, of both Brahms and Cantrell: I happened to have your web text in front of me as I listened to the podcast version, and hearing the one while seeing the other seemed to lead me deeper into your very subtle thoughts about ambiguity – in life or the subset of Life that is music.
The remastering is spectacular!
Joel Bacon’s recent skirting of the edges of programmatic interpretation of Mozart’s religious music (a daring tightrope act,which he pulled off well) discussed the psychological effects of different chords and tone sequences – I wished at the time you could have heard him, and more now – it would be a pleasure to listen in on the conversation, as it is to the podcasts.
Paul,
Thanks very much for sharing this Brahms Intermezzo - it is beautifully played. I agree about the ambiguity - music takes us into regions words can’t express…
You play beautifully…
I used to play this too… forgot the name. How vivid ‘unnamed memories’ can be when they return!
Paul,
this blog is one of the most interesting things I’ve found in a long time.
http://ignazio.blogspot.com/2006/06/intermezzo.html
Love the 117-2, the epitome of creative genius with the way the music breathes and weaves its own pathway. Good rendition although I just listened to the incredible recording by Glen Gould of this very Intermezzo. You are right - things are not always as they seem with Brahms. All those inner melodies and rythms are what makes this music so special. Good job.
Hello Paul. Excuse my english, I’m a poor french music lover. Thanks for your play. It sounds very intimate, deeply, without effect. I love this. Here, the sun comes slowly. And in this uncertain light, your music is perfect.