3 Intermezzi

When he was 57, Brahms announced his retirement, but the autumnal period of his life that followed would produce some of his most reflective, intimate works for solo piano. Among them are these 3 Intermezzi from 1892, which the composer privately called the “cradle songs of my sorrows”. What secret significance did these three works seem to hold for Brahms? It’s hard to know, but this elegiac triptych of lullabies was certainly written with his close friend in mind: the composer and pianist Clara Schumann. In the first intermezzo—as in the opp. 116-118 companion pieces—you can hear the “Clara theme”, a descending motif that had haunted the music of her husband, the composer Robert Schumann. The piece is based on an old Scottish ballad, Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament, translated by Johann Gottfried von Herder—its words "Balow, my babe, lie still and sleep! It grieves me sore to see thee weep” inspiring a gently rocking lullaby. Nostalgia grips the graceful opening arpeggios of the second intermezzo, in B-flat minor, while the opening of the third, with its stark octaves in C-sharp minor, takes us immediately to deeper, darker emotional territory. This last piece is believed to be an unacknowledged setting of a Scottish love ballad. Clara would also be the first pianist to see Op. 117, declaring that the music moved her soul.