Headed home....
There’s nothing like some classical music for folks who just want to kick back, chill out and get a taste of beauty. On occasion, I’ll post an entire piece, but sometimes it’s fun to just post one movement of a piece for a taste of what the composer wanted to achieve.
This is young Jo Brahms, before he grew the full-face beard and exchanged his four pack a day habit for high-end Cuban stogies. This was Brahms who played piano in a waterfront dive in Hamburg, hung around with hookers and was an alcoholic by the time he was 14. He went into rehab in the German countryside, cleaned up his act and got Bob and Clara Schumann to take an interest in him and his music. Clara was one of the best pianists of the era, and Bob published The New Musical Times, the most important publication on music in the German-speaking world. “Hats off, a genius!” was the opening line of their review of Jo’s early work.
When Bob and Clara went on the road, Jo was babysitter for the large Schumann brood, leading the way in sliding down bannisters and swinging from chandeliers. He was the naughty uncle the kids needed in that overly serious musical household.
This piece comes from that early era when Brahms was a mere 21 years old. He revised the piece in the final years of his life but left this slow movement in five sharps pretty much alone. It always reminds me of laying out on the grass and watching the stars in the sky.