The Hammershoi painting, like are all of his, is quiet. The sparsely furnished room is almost monochrome, the solitary figure is turned away from us and is looking elsewhere, specifically for someone or something, we might think, in the street, beyond the room. While it is quiet, there is plenty going on.
While this is Late Brahms, it's not the last things he wrote. Those, we are told in the notes, are a set of pieces for organ that came after the death of Clara Schumann. From 1892 and 93, when he was 59, which might have been older then than it is now, he wasn't quite going to make it to 64 and so, he had experienced the loss of several close friends and we are retrospectively tempted into reading them as somehow themed by an awareness of mortality, and valedictory. We are given a quote from 1894 that suggests he soon thought so himself, but maybe not quite at the time.
Thus, although one might think one hears a premonition of the Strauss Four Last Songs in places, like the Fantasia in E minor, track 4, we ought not let too much extraneous little knowledge, which can be a dangerous thing, colour our interpretation. What if we didn't have the word 'final' in the title of the album.
Including the three Intermezzos, op.117, 14 of the 20 tracks are intermezzos- 3 capriccios, a ballade, a romance and a rhapsodie. As music removed from their composers biography, they are 'thoughtful', they ruminate, not unhappily, and have a measured lyrical nostalgia. One can listen to them while looking at the Hammershoi and they fit each other very well, which not all of Brahms would. You don't have to be 59 to feel such moods or, in the case of a consummate artist, translate them into such work. His piano music is not that which comes in between Chopin's and Rachmanninov's. They come either side of him. I waited longer than I wanted for this to arrive- from Greece with Greek stamps on- but it was in plenty of time for my personal Brahms Festival, which is still going.
In the Clavierstucke, op. 118, it is delicately introspective apart from the suddenly more upbeat Ballade.
There are some quicker tempi in those of op. 119 before the more strident finale of the Rhapsodie.
It was taken back to the beginning for another complete play in short order last night to accompany some very fine reading which made for a top quality evening. It's not for me to compare Stephen Hough with other pianists but he is suspected of being top drawer, with Martha Argerich, and wonderful during the more remote and elsewhere the music seems to be taking us.
It's not that far on the vast musical map from Isata Kanneh-Mason's Clara Schumann album, which was the best new record I heard last year and has not long been long filed in its place on the shelves after a long stay on the 'playlist' pile next to the CD player. I imagine this will do the same, as an early but very likely contender for this year's best. It could repel all boarders, see them off and still be the best of 2020 come December.
