Musical memories

The first pieces of classical music that I heard as a college freshman have really stuck with me. Be it Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy or, in this case, Brahms, I must have been super receptive to the music that was offered at the recitals at William & Mary.  In this case it was, again, Kathy Geralds playing a late Brahms Intermezzo. Recently I read an essay about Brahms that suggested he wrote best for short formats such as the piano pieces from Op. 10 as a young man through Op. 119, which he composed in 1893, just a few years before his death. I am the last one to say anything derogatory about his longer works , some of which are on my all-time-favorite list. However, the short pieces have a certain poetic intensity to them - each in its own way - that draw you in and have you singing or moving with them after a minute. And yet they are not simple. I've performed a few of them and heard most of the others played live.  The Op. 117, No. 2, is one which is particularly tricky...

The autograph of the first page of Op. 109 I'll never forget hearing Kathy Geralds, then a senior at William & Mary, play the first movement of this sonata at a noon recital at the beginning of my freshman year. Immediately afterwards, I was telling an upperclassman about how thrilling I found the sonata and when he asked which one she had played, I said, "Beethoven's 109th Sonata." He quickly clarified the difference for me between opus number and sonata number. It's a shame, though, that Ludwig didn't write 109 of them - this 250th jubilee year would have to last two years to fit them all in, but I think we've already had enough of 2020.  There's the playful first movement that refuses to allow the casual listener to comprehend it, contrasted by the short in-your-face second movement that only the greatest masters can perform transparently, and the ethereal, heavenly last movement of variations - something for everyone! Luckily, this piece is per...