June 23, 2009: A Brahms of ghosts and shadows

For those who have been following in my "chamber music on a budget" footsteps, today's Noontime Concerts™ recital at Old St. Mary's Cathedral by pianist Miles Graber, violinist Mariya Borozina, and cellist Miriam Perkoff provided an excellent opportunity for comparative listening.  Their performance of Johannes Brahms' second piano trio, Opus 87, in C major provided an excellent complement to last month's performance of the first trio, Opus 8, in B major by the MusicAEterna trio (for which Graber serves as pianist) at the Old First Church.  However, the comparison may well lead many listeners in unanticipated directions;  because, in spite of its usually "upbeat" key, the later trio is as cold and dark as the earlier one is warm and comforting.

This may perplex those with more conventional expectations.  How can Brahms find so much darkness in C major and so much warmth in B major?  I suppose the answer is that, while Johann Sebastian Bach may have exploited different "character traits" from different keys, based on the underlying logics of their different intervallic relations, Brahms' use of equally-divided intervals allowed him to make key choices primarily on the basis of what he wanted the hands to do, leaving matters of those character traits to rhetorical strategy.  In the case of that second trio, that rhetorical strategy involves different approaches to concealment.  For example, the piano never gets to state the very opening theme of the first movement until the end of that movement.  In the Scherzo movement, while the trio section settles comfortably into primary cadences, it is embraced by outer sections of flittering gestures that dart by before the ear can really grasp them;  and that same relation between the evanescent and the startlingly clear also pervades the final movement.  Brahms may not quite be Dominic Flandry, Poul Anderson's Knight of Ghosts and Shadows;  but the rhetoric of this second piano trio is definitely ghostly and shadowy!

Graber, Borozina, and Perkoff certainly had no trouble honoring this rhetorical strategy.  Their technical command of the score was all that it should have been, allowing those primary cadences to jump out of the shadows right in the spirit (pun intended) of the composition.  Ironically, this was one of those wonderful sunny days in San Francisco, contrasting as much with the Brahms trio as that cold Sunday afternoon had contrasted with the performance of Opus 8.  Given the contentious sort that Brahms was, his own ghost was probably pleased with both of these contrasts!