Exploring German Romantic Style

Ironwood’s interpretation of these works is based on the evidence of performing practices specific to Brahms and his circle, as well as general practices of the second half of the 19th century.

Richard Bath, a violinist in Brahms’s close circle, noted within a few years of the composer’s death that the performance style appropriate to his music was already being ignored or forgotten (Hoffmann, 1979, p.31). The aesthetics of performance underwent rapid change in the first decades of the 20th century, with a developing insistence that the score encapsulated all that the composer expected. With this modernist attitude, the notation started to be taken at face value, without consideration of the myriad unnotated conventions that were intrinsically linked to the musical artwork as conceived by the composer. For Brahms, this has led to interpretations devoid of key expressive elements which he considered indispensable for his music (Brown, 1994; Peres Da Costa, 2012; Brown, Peres Da Costa, Bennet-Wadsworth, 2015; Wilson, 2014; Milsom, 2003). His music has been spoken in a language he surely would not have recognised!

German string players associated with Brahms, including Joachim and his students, mostly employed a steady tone with various shades of vibrato added judiciously in an ornamental fashion. Vibrato was effected with a range of speeds according to player and expressive need, and was characteristically narrow in amplitude, the action being produced from the finger or wrist, rather than the arm.

Portamento or audible sliding was employed frequently and noticeably (slowly and heavily) to enhance legato, especially in moving up or down a string to avoid string crossings that would interfere with the tonal unity of the melody. Its use along with other Romantic-era practices preserved on early recordings had been eloquently described by Robert Donington as ‘out of this world for aural nectar and ambrosia’ (Donington, 1963, 9th ed., 1989, p.40). Most often, German string players used the ‘Classical’ shift—what Carl Flesch (1873–1944) termed the ‘L’ portamento—sliding from the initial note with the old finger and dropping the new finger into the new note.

German string players from the time of Louis Spohr (1784–1859) employed a largely ‘on the string’ (legato) bowing style, with only occasional use of bounced bow effects (spiccato and so on) for special occasions. Many of the shorter-articulation bow strokes were executed using the middle to the upper half of the bow.

Much of this information is documented in the Joachim’s Violinschule (1905), produced in conjunction with Andreas Moser (1859–1925).

During the 19th century, many pianists made particular and frequent use of dislocation (separation of melody from accompaniment) and chordal arpeggiation (even when unnotated) to give prominence to important notes and to vary texture. Brahms was known for making frequent arpeggiations. Such practices are well documented in written sources, making it clear that dislocation and arpeggiation were deemed indispensable for highly expressive music in both slow and fast sections, and when such expressive terms as dolce, con espressione, con anima, legato, sostenuto, cantabile, cantando or portato (slurred staccato) were indicated. Tellingly, in the German version of his Anweisung (1828), Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) advises that, on Viennese or German pianos, 'Full chords are [...] mostly broken very quickly and are far more effective than if the notes were played together with the same degree of strength (Hummel, 1827, vol.2, p.454, trans. C. Brown) The idea of breaking chords to give them life and energy is echoed by several authors throughout the 19th century. Of particular significance in Brahms's music is the slur over two notes, not merely indicating smooth connection (legato). Brahms's student Florence May (1845–1923) noted that 'he made very much of the well-known effect of two notes slurred together, whether in loud or soft tone (May, 1905, vol.1 p.18) This created a localised phrasing—an emphasis at the beginning of the slur with a decay in sound at the end, sometimes with a shortened final note. On early recordings, slurs over two notes are often heard in this way, but also noticeably with an uneven lilting long/short rhythm. Flexibility of rhythm (departing from the strict note values of the notation) was intrinsic to the performance style of Brahms and his circle, to enhance expression, to emphasise character and/or to create variety. Such a practice is still well and alive in jazz and popular music but is admitted to a much lesser extent in mainstream classical music performance. Allied to rhythmic flexibility was the use of tempo modification (speeding up or slowing down, often quite markedly) to amplify character and mood. The effect of crescendo could be made greater with an increase in tempo, a diminuendo with decreasing tempo. And structural points could be delineated by making significant pauses. Fanny Davies (1861–1934)—a student of Clara Schumann and Brahms who ear-witnessed many chamber music rehearsals and performances by Brahms and his circle makes this clear. She noted that Brahms's manner of interpretation was 'free, very elastic and expansive' while he always retained the balance; 'one felt the fundamental rhythms underlying the surface rhythms.' Brahms used such elasticity to highlight phrasing, especially in lyrical passages during which 'a strictly metronomic Brahms is as unthinkable as a fussy or hurried Brahms in passages which must be presented with adamantine rhythm.' With reference to the third movement of his Piano Trio, Op. 101, Davies explains that Brahms 'would lengthen infinitesimally a whole bar, or even a whole phrase, rather than spoil its quietude by making it up into a strictly metronomic bar.' She regarded such elasticity as a chief characteristic of his manner of interpretation. (Davies in Cobbett, 1963, 2nd ed., vol.1, p. 182) Today, the hairpin signs < >, and < > in 19th-century music are generally interpreted as indicators of dynamic nuance. According to Davies, however, the double hairpin sign, at least in Brahms's case, signalled an expressive temporal modification: 'The sign >, as used by Brahms, often occurs when he wishes to express great sincerity and warmth, applied not only to tone but to rhythm also. He would linger not on one note alone, but on a whole idea, as if unable to tear himself away from its beauty. (Davies, vol.1, p.182) David Hyun-Su Kim's article 'The Brahmsian Hairpin', comparing Brahms's notation with evidence in early sound recordings of pianists and other musicians closely connected with the composer, confirms Davies' account: for Brahms, < > indicated more than dynamic change; they often indicated a temporal change of either an agogic accent (lengthening of a single note) or a larger-scale broadening of tempo (,). This could be further enhanced (both temporally and sonically) by instrument-specific techniques, including those discussed above: portamento or vibrato for the string players (and singers), and dislocation and arpeggiation for the pianists. Hyun-Su Kim also makes a compelling case for < and > as signifying tempo variation in Brahms's music. The great challenge in approaching the performance of Brahms's music is to decipher what the notation meant to the composer and his circle, what reactions the notation triggered, what unnotated practices need to be explored, and what expression is musically and stylistically appropriate. The evidence is conclusive. Over a period of time Ironwood has experimented with Brahms's expressive palette to create interpretations that we feel approach his expectations (Hyun-Su Kim, 2012).

A Note about Instruments

In Brahms's era, string instrumentalists still played on unwound gut-strung instruments (with metal wound over gut on the G and C strings), in essentially modern set up with Tourte-style bows. Cellists still played without spikes, with the cello supported between the legs. Our string instruments are set up in this same way on this recording. Viennese and German, English and French makers dominated the piano manufacturing scene, producing essentially wooden-framed instruments that were straight- or parallel-strung, with a steadily increasing range of notes. Viennese-action instruments were fitted with leather-covered hammers that produced a bright and clear tone quality, bringing out the string's fundamental tone rather than its upper harmonics or partials. The simple Prell mechanism permitted rapid passage-work and repetition, and the damping was efficient. The stringing produced distinct register changes through the compass, typically described as light and flute-like in the treble, warm and orchestral in the middle register, and brassy in the bass. In his younger years in Hamburg, Brahms became well acquainted with the early Romantic Viennese- action pianos, essentially the şame as those known and loved by Beethoven and Schubert. In 1856, Brahms became the custodian of the Schumanns' Conrad Graf Viennese grand piano, made in 1839, which Robert and Clara had received from Graf as a wedding present in 1849, and on which Brahms had so impressed them with his compositions and piano playing. In the 1850s Brahms used a range of pianos, including those by the Hamburg firm of Baumgardten and Heins and the celebrated Paris- factory Sébastien Érard (1752–1831) pianos. In mid-career in the 1860s, the pianos of the Viennese firm of Johann Baptist Streicher (1796–1871) also played a very significant role. Brahms knew Streicher's pianos very well playing them in Vienna from about 1862 onwards. He informed Clara in 1864 that he had 'a beautiful grand from Streicher' on which he practised, and that Streicher 'wanted to share [his] new achievements with me (Litzmann, 1908, vol.3, pp.167–68 in Cai, 1989, p.60). On many occasions he performed at the J.B. Streicher salon, and made a point of choosing Streicher's instruments at other venues as late as 1869. Therefore, Streicher's instruments at this time figured heavily in both his private and public sound worlds. In 1873 Streicher gave Brahms one of his Viennese-action pianos, made in 1868. Brahms was greatly enamoured with this instrument and kept it in his apartment in Vienna for the rest of his life, using it to compose and to play on in private. He understood and revered the capabilities of Streicher's pianos. Writing to Clara Schumann in 1887, he explained: 'It is quite a different matter to write for instruments whose characteristics and sound one only incidentally has in one's head and which one can only hear mentally, than to write for an instrument which one knows through and through, as I know this piano. There [on the Streicher] I always know exactly what I write and why I write one way or another (Litzmann, 1908, pp. 493–94).

© Neal Peres Da Costa