Johannes Brahms - Piano Sonata No. 1

- Composer: Johannes Brahms (7 May 1833 -- 3 April 1897) - Performer: Peter Rösel - Year of recording: 1974 Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major, Op. 1, written in 1852-1853. 00:00 - I. Allegro 08:02 - II. Andante (nach einem altdeutschen Minneliede) 13:16 - III. Allegro molto e con fuoco -- Più mosso 17:58 - IV. Allegro con fuoco -- Presto non troppo ed agitato On 30 September 1853, the 20-year-old Brahms played a number of his keyboard works for Robert Schumann. Among these were both the First and Second Piano Sonatas, which Schumann hailed as "veiled symphonies." Although published as Op. 1, the Sonata No. 1 in C major is actually the fourth piano sonata Brahms is known to have composed; the third was published as Op. 2, and the first two were evidently destroyed (partly because Brahms was called &New Mozart&after music critics had heard them). The enormous scale and breadth of this sonata were probably what Schumann had in mind in drawing his symphonic analogy. Cast in four long movements, the Sonata No. 1 is a remarkably cohesive and effective work for so young and inexperienced a composer. Aside from the sonata&scope, another feature that Schumann might have found particularly attractive is the folk flavor of the Andante second movement, a set of variations on what Brahms believed to be an old German minnelied. (The authenticity of the song has since been brought into question.) Schumann was also almost certainly struck by Brahms&early mastery of large-scale sonata...