Brahms Cello

It's uncanny how certain composers can "fit" certain performers as comfortably as a well worn pair of slippers and that's exactly how Zoe felt when she heard Amir playing Brahms a number of years ago.

Having explored a vast amount of repertoire together over the course of nearly 15 years, it was inevitable they turn their attention to the two sonatas for piano and cello by Johannes Brahms. Played on a modern Australian cello made in Castlemaine by celebrated maker, Rainer Beilharz, the three songs (originally sung in German) find an unexpectedly natural home and act as enticing entrées to these seminal works.

There is a famous photo of Brahms with his friends. Brahms is seated and behind him is the cellist, Hausmann. Hausmann (who was the cellist in Joachim’s quartet) has his arms over Brahms, pretending to play him like a cello. Quite literally playing Brahms! Hausmann was responsible for reviving the first sonata and it was he who implored Brahms to write its successor. Hausmann and Joachim were the inaugural players in Brahms’ double concerto.

The second sonata is best summed up by Elisabet von Herzogenberg who received a manuscript from Brahms. She wrote: “I'd like to hear you yourself play the Scherzo, with its driving power and energy (I can hear you constantly snorting and grunting in it!) No one else would succeed in playing it as I imagine it: agitated without rushing, legato and yet inwardly restless and propulsive. Needless to say, we revelled in the beautiful warm sounds of the Adagio, and especially at the magnificent moment when we find ourselves again in F-sharp major, which sounds so marvellous. I really do want to point this moment out to you, because it brings a tear to my eye whenever I hear it. It has such nostalgia and love.”