De la música al piano

Utterly beautiful in so many ways: Meet one of your new favorite piano piece.

• Key: A minor Tempo: Allegro con espressione Style: Romantic  
• Will improve your: >Voicing, >Pedalling >Understanding of Brahms’s style

Brahms was notoriously self-critical 

This statement is often cited as a reason for why comparatively few sketches and draft versions of his piano works survived. But this is the one that got away! 

The Albumblatt is a real find. 

There are only a very small number of easier individual pieces by the composer. What distinguishes the Albumblatt (or Album Leaf ) from his few remaining sketch-like piano works – such as the Piece in B flat or Canon in F minor –is its musical quality. The moment you start playing the work, it sounds and feels like top-notch Brahms. 

Brahms must have been partial to this melody line…

…because a few years after this Albumblatt was penned it surfaced again in one
of his published works, the Horn Trio Op 40. Here Brahms used it as the Trio section in the Scherzo movement – but a semitone down in A flat minor (now that’s a good sight-reading exercise!). 

There are a number of different challenges in the Albumblatt.

The most fundamental is a musical one: Apart from bars 25-30 there are three textures that need to be heard. These are the melody in the RH, the LH which doubles the melody in the outer sections of the work, and the quavers in the RH, which contribute to the sense of an Allegro tempo without being overtly busy. The next challenge is a very Brahmsian one: if your hand is not comfortable stretching more than an octave, you’ll need to find ways of making larger stretches work for you. And finally, there is the tempo and sound of the piece. Let’s look at all three elements. 

Texture

Separate hand practice can be very useful. The LH in bars 13 to 31 has a distinct life of its own. Work on memorising the voicing, sometimes by leaving out the dotted minims, but playing all other notes. The RH, too, can benefit from learning the melody line as
a separate texture to the quavers. Play both individually against the LH. When you finally put hands together, you’ll get a much better sense of the different textures and melody lines that Brahms notated. The piece will sound much busier than at first sight because you’ll be more aware of the independence (and interdependence) of the lines. 

Bigger stretches

I recommend not to adopt a ‘one-way-fits-all’ approach, but to consider the musical context in which a chord might need to be arpeggiated, or broken. The opening of the piece has a melodic octave jump from the upbeat to the top E in bar 1. That connection should have as little rhythmic interference as possible, so I would arpeggiate the opening chord in the LH, tucking in the lowest two notes after the upbeat, almost like a (very quiet) triplet figure that leads across the bar line. The LH chords in bars 11 and 39 have a different musical context, though. The thirds are the aural focus, and the lowest note in the LH merely an organ point (though that’s important too). The thirds therefore need to be played on the beat, and the lowest note is struck just before the beat. The same can be applied to bars 41, 43 and 45. 

It’s tempting to keep on sight- reading this gorgeous work, but some slow, detailed practice will make all the difference. 

Tempo and sound

Because the melody is stunningly beautiful, there is the temptation to take time and enjoy it for a little longer. I do advise to listen to the relevant section of the Horn Trio, because it’s a good benchmark for the piano solo version (a rough tempo marking of dotted minim = 52 works well). However, there is one indulgent moment – the bass note in bar 31 is by far the lowest pitch in the piece. It occurs when the main section is repeated, and it’s a moment to emphasise quietly and by allowing a bit more time on the first beat. It’s utterly beautiful.

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