BRAHMS VIOLA SONATA OP.120 NO.1

Antoine Tamestit discusses how he found an ideal piano–viola balance and came to love Brahms, after a long struggle. Here he covers the first and second movements, in the first of two articles

From Brahms Clarinet Sonatas op.120. Urtext edition with additional viola part, paperbound. Eds. Egon Voss, Johannes Behr. Pf fingering Klaus Schilde. Va fingering and bowing Tabea Zimmermann. Order no. HN 988, ISMN 979-0-2018-0988-5. €24.50. Printed with permission of G. Henle Verlag, Munich © 2013

Although I started playing Brahms’s sonatas when I was a student, I did not feel comfortable with them for a long time – even after I had studied them with Jean Sulem in Paris, Jesse Levine in the States and Tabea Zimmermann in Berlin. I always felt drowned out by the many notes and full chords in the piano part, until I met Cédric Tiberghien, with whom I recently recorded them. He is a poetic, subtle pianist with a refined touch, who always prioritises colour over virtuosity, and he sang every line so smoothly on the piano, without ever being aggressive or too strong about it, that the balance became clearer. Suddenly I saw the genius of Brahms’s writing.

Voicing and balance

Part of this genius is the way that Brahms gives supporting and leading roles at the same time. In this F minor Sonata, the opening bars of the piano part could be a theme or an accompaniment, and the viola entry from bar 5 could be a theme or just a singing, warm comment intended to mix intimately with the piano. When the opening notes return in the piano bass from bar 38, I again see the piano as the leading voice and the viola as only a commentator, until the second beat of bar 46. The relationship between the parts is intricate, and it was only when I realised this that I stopped trying to force out my lines and began to understand the voicing and balance.

Using my 1672 ‘Gustav Mahler’ Stradivari viola, gut strings, a 19th-century bow and an 1899 Bechstein piano also helped. With less tension across my instrument, I could approach everything in a smoother, more singing way that mixed with the piano, so that I didn’t feel the need to project above it. The Bechstein showed us why Brahms wrote so many chords in the bass and middle register, which were less punchy, strong or harsh than on a modern instrument.

THE SOLOIST

NAME ANTOINE TAMESTIT

NATIONALITY FRENCH

STUDIED WITH JEAN SULEM, JESSE LEVINE, TABEA ZIMMERMANN

RECORDED FOR AVI, BIS, DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON, HARMONIA MUNDI, LSO LIVE, NAÏVE CLASSIQUE, NIMBUS, PENTATONE

‘In so much of Brahms’s music there is a feeling of nostalgic, loving emotion that builds up again and again, always leading in different directions’

Antoine Tamestit’s album of Brahms’s op.120 Sonatas with pianist Cédric Tiberghien was released on Harmonia Mundi in February

JULIEN MIGNOT

Bach with a Hungarian twist

I have always wanted to phrase the opening notes of this sonata from the first F, on the second beat of the first bar. I could never understand why, until I had a lesson with the clarinettist and composer Jörg Widmann. He said, ‘You know that this comes from Bach, right?’ The four circled notes at the opening are actually a quote from ‘O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden’, a chorale in the St Matthew Passion, and they recur throughout the movement. Brahms took them for himself and changed them, moving Bach’s strong first beat to the second beat of the bar.

This gives a sense of metre very much in the Hungarian tradition, where what is important thematically – whether in speech or music – is accented, no matter where it occurs.

In bar 5, too, Brahms writes a piano chord on the second beat so that we feel this Hungarian agogic leading us, and we don’t know where the first beat is any more. We can turn the whole first movement around by looking at the second beat as the most important beat of the bar.

The clarinet version

Brahms, of course, originally composed this sonata for clarinet, in 1894. Not long afterwards he wrote a wonderful letter to the violinist Joseph Joachim, asking him to bring his viola to Frankfurt so that they could meet to play the sonatas on the viola. Brahms thought they would sound beautiful and wanted to play them to Clara Schumann, so I’m sure he put love and affection into the viola version as well.

Switching between the clarinet and viola versions has been an important part of my journey with this music, and it is something that I did over a period of two or three years. For me there is a certain depth, darkness and mystery missing in the clarinet version, and I found its high notes too virtuosic and brilliant. Gradually I became more convinced by the viola version, which still allows for a brilliant sound, to balance with the piano, but also has a darkness better suited to the viola.

One thing in particular that I have taken away from this experience comes at bar 116 of the first movement. Here the clarinet and viola are in the same tessitura until bar 125, where the viola plays an octave lower. Our sound colour for this has to be influenced by the tessitura of the clarinet, because the ascending piano sequence starting in bar 123 reaches its peak on the second beat of bar 125. We have to be strong and lead that phrase to its climax, without letting the tension fall just because we are playing an octave lower. The low viola C sharp at the end of bar 130 then gives a wonderful, loud, rich depth and darkness.

Tempo change in the first movement

Many people play more slowly from bar 206, but Brahms only wrote a new tempo of Sostenuto ed espressivo from bar 214. Bar 206 is a return of the viola’s opening phrase and should have a clear relationship to the beginning of the movement. If we play it slowly, bar 214 will have to be even slower, but Brahms only instructed us to play with sustain, weight and expression. He didn’t mark langsam or molto lento! I play tempo primo from bar 206, and I expand the beat a little for the arpeggios and triplets. For the sostenuto itself, Cédric and I then come down to about q= 66. No slower!

Andante un poco adagio

The instruction Andante un poco adagio at the opening of the second movement is complex and ambiguous. If we enjoy the quavers ( e) too much here, we’ll find ourselves in 4/8 instead of 2/4. If we enjoy the demisemiquavers ( ) too much, we will get even slower, until we start to feel the pulse in quavers. That’s a mistake: we should try to feel it in crotchets ( q) from the beginning. We can practise the simple, descending melodic line of E flat, D, D, C in crotchets at around q= 70, which doesn’t make sense musically, but it helps us to understand the core andante melody. Then we add the quavers, like raindrops, and last the demisemiquaver embroidery, which could have been written with a turn sign.

When we choose the final tempo, that descending crotchet melody has to be a clear, flowing andante, but the ornaments should sound adagio, graceful and unrushed. It has to flow, like we are singing while walking in the forest, swinging along to the piano’s pendulum-like quavers.

Love and disappointment

In so much of Brahms’s music there is a feeling of nostalgic, loving emotion that builds up again and again, always leading in different directions. In the second movement, he builds up in A major from bar 27, with a deceptive crescendo that suddenly falls back to piano in bar 29.

After that comes darkness and disappointment. We have the same beginning again in bars 35–36, but this time a crescendo takes us all the way to bar 40. Here we reach the nirvana that we were looking for the first time around. For me, this is a beautiful, liberating moment, and I use a little vibrato to put more warmth into my sound.

At the end of bar 60, Brahms writes pianissimo Leggiero e dolce in the piano part: light and sweet. Again I find a nostalgic happiness here, so I put a little slide between the last two notes, to give a little pinch to the heart.

Approach to vibrato

It is difficult to say how to approach vibrato in this sonata. When I listened to clarinet recordings by Widmann, Martin Fröst and Lorenzo Coppola, their phrases were beautiful and touching because of their timing, emphasis and the way they sang through each line. I decided to search for that same type of expression, without vibrato, in the opening of the second movement, and Cédric and I must have practised it that way a hundred times! If I do use vibrato in performance, I try to find a sound that doesn’t disturb the singing line. I’ll slow it down for more weight and melancholy, or speed it up for more brilliance, but I avoid using anything wide or forced.

It should only be used if it improves the tone in a natural-sounding way.

We have very few recordings of Brahms himself playing, but from what we do have, we know that he played freely and expressively with rubato, without the need for vibrato. We also know that Joachim hardly used any vibrato, which poses the question of what Brahms had in mind at the time, and of how we should phrase and express ourselves through his music. Do we really always need vibrato as a means of expression? I do use it when I play Brahms, but to work up from using no vibrato at all to adding only what sounds natural is the best approach for me.

INTERVIEW BY PAULINE HARDING