Hyperion Records

This music is less overtly determined than its companion, but no less terse in fact. The main theme stretches itself comfortably and does not eschew repetition like the one in the F minor sonata; it is also more persistent in the movement as a whole, especially its opening phrase. The development uses quick arpeggiated triplets that may remind the ear of Beethoven’s first Rasumovsky Quartet or of his Triple Concerto (the first movement in each) – Brahms was in any case so fond of this sort of locomotion that it by now had become purely characteristic of himself.

The other two movements are markedly contrasted with each other. The scherzo, Allegro appassionato, is in E flat minor and begins in a flowing vein that at first seems to follow easily what has gone before – but it becomes intense and full of measured energy, and there is a trio in B major, one of Brahms’s most splendid melodies. In the third movement, Andante con moto, he relaxes into five variations and coda on a beautiful theme that shows no inclination to activity until a stormy variation interrupts in E flat minor. But the sun soon comes out again, and the sonata ends happily, as it began.

from notes by Robert Simpson © 1986