Agreed.

Nevertheless, quite a tricky thing to do - to follow earlier conventions about paired notes and give a sense of a very long line.

Tommo

OK, it must have been the E-flat sonata Op. 120 No. 2 that you played with viola. Look at the following passage from the second movement:




Note how, after the big piano octaves and chords, Brahms then groups the two-note slurs under longer phrases (a practice which he first employed in the Variationen über ein eigenes Thema Op. 21 No. 1 for piano). It's my belief that this particular notation implies that such slurs should be played continuously. Thus the contrast between the two sections of the above example is heightened by such a change in articulative practice. Those double octaves in the piano, so often played like some Lisztian bravura flourish, should still be slurred and separated in this manner (being the culmination of the phrase unit length progressively decreasing), then the clarinet answers such a statement with a more legato line. The final staccato octave in the third bar of the second system obviously serves as an upbeat to the chord that follows (and so should in my opinion connect with that, rather than simply being the endpoint of a downward spiral), a type of motive that recurs at various places in the sonata, as for example in the passage below from the first movement (but note the articulation here; also, Ollie might fill you in on why this sonata and this particular motive are of particular importance to me )

That was just a motivic similarity that I was drawing attention to.

Ian
That's a very interesting example. I wonder if the slurring of the pairs of quavers you refer to in the third system has anything to do, in Brahms' way of thinking, with the fact that the first note of each pair is an accented dissonance (appogiatura)? (In contrast, naturally, with the dovetailed four-quaver groups in the piano right hand, which are arpeggiations of consonant harmony.) Is this a slightly ambiguous license to 'lean' on those first notes on Brahms' part, do you think, even if that doesn't necessarily entail articulating the first of the second pair by tonguing?
Also, I don't have a copy of the score to hand, so how does B articulate this figure when it returns in crotchets, just after the pause which comes immediately after your extract?

Yes, in that case I think so, very much, but in contrast to the first system in the clarinet, where the G (sounding F) shouldn't be leaned on. Brahms foregrounds a particular aspect of the basic theme in this distinct manner in the passage you refer to.


Here's the passage in question:



Again, here I think the G shouldn't be leaned on because of the phrasing. Like Beethoven and others before him, Brahms would articulate a theme differently on different appearances.

Even though no one seems to be taking the bait: Member Pace is doubtless referring here to his own very fine and effective if somewhat disturbing work "...quasi una fantasmagoria op. 120 no. 2" for speaking clarinettist and speaking pianist, which takes the Brahms second clarinet sonata as its basis. The performers play the second sonata while narrating their own rather tormented inner thoughts and reflections on performance and preparation. The pianist in particular has to negotiate those tricky leaps with books under his (so far it's always been his) arms. Problem is Ian always did it so well that it didn't make much audible difference.

Yes and thanks and thanks

By the look of these instruments they should sound very nice. They would probably have a milld sound. I love their sound even by looking at them.
It will not be totally unlike clarinet, but very different. I often think that black pianos sound differently than brown (or white) one. The type and the colour of the wood changes the sound very much (in my mind). May be it is only in my mind because I am very suggestable.