Ohlsson Concludes his SFP Brahms Cycle

Garrick Ohlsson (photograph by Dario Acosta, from the SFP event page for this performance)

Last night in Herbst Theatre Garrick Ohlsson concluded his four-concert cycle of the piano music of Johannes Brahms, which he had prepared for his appearances with San Francisco Performances (SFP). The series had begun in 2019 with performances on February 21 and March 28. The third recital took place on February 4, 2020, with the conclusion scheduled for the following March 31. This become one of the more regrettable cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last night the second of the twelve Summer Music Sessions finally offered the cycle’s conclusion.

Ohlsson’s program design was particularly distinctive, since he chose to couple the earliest published composition, the Opus 1 piano sonata in C major, with the latest published music for solo piano, the Opus 119 collection of four pieces. Both of these were significant undertakings, and Ohlsson provided a judicious “spacer” between these two offerings in the form of the two-hand version of Brahms’ Opus 39 collection of sixteen waltzes. Opus 1 was composed in 1853 and published that same year. Chronologically, it was preceded in 1851 by a scherzo movement in E-flat minor, which was subsequently published as his Opus 4. Ohlsson began his program with this short composition. The publication of these early works owed much to the promotional efforts of Robert Schumann.

There is very much a sense of a grand scale in both Opus 4 and Opus 1. While Ohlsson did not try to understate that grandeur, his attentive sense of both dynamics and tempo disclosed intricately subtle details in the Brahms scores that often go unnoticed by pianists that throw all of their energy into plowing through this music with full force. That said, there are many instances of what might be called “lingering durations,” suggesting that a well-intentioned editor might have tightened up the overall structures. Ohlsson clearly knew to avoid such good intentions, letting Brahms be Brahms in both of those pieces. Nevertheless, the listening experiences are not for the faint of heart; and it takes time for the attentive listener to adjust to Brahms’ approach to extended duration in these early works.

Towards the end of his life, however, Brahms began to appreciate the virtues of “making more and more with less and less” (as Buckminster Fuller liked to put it). Opus 119 is the last of four collections (with consecutive opus numbers) that Brahms composed near the end of his life. (Chronologically they coincide with his new-found interest in writing chamber music for the clarinet.) I remember working on the Opus 119 pieces back when I had more agility (and more patience); and I welcome any opportunity to listen to them in performance. Ohlsson’s far more informed approach to these pieces could not have offered a better “sense of an ending” to his cycle (even if he then revisited the second of the Opus 118 pieces as an encore).

I am more familiar with the Opus 39 waltzes in their four-hand version. Even in that setting, there are no end of tricky intricacies that the performer(s) must manage. (The passages that deliberately depart from the expected 3/4 metrical pulse are the trickiest to master, but they yield the most satisfaction!) The solo version was always above my pay grade, and I have nothing but the highest admiration for any pianist that can cram all of those notes into two hands and still make it sound like an enticing diversion. Opus 39 may have been a “spacer” between the listening demands afforded by both Opus 1 and Opus 119; but Ohlsson knew exactly how to capture attention not only to the waltzes themselves but also to the sense of a journey that unfolds as Opus 39 progresses.