Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 16 (2019), pp 483–490 © Cambridge University Press, 2019

SCORE REVIEW

Clive Brown, Neal Peres Da Costa, Kate Bennett Wadsworth, eds. Performance Practices
in Johannes Brahms’ Chamber Music. Bärenreiter-Verlag Urtext. Kassel: Bärenreiter-
Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH und Co. KG, 2015; 2nd ed., 2016. 70 pp., BA 9600, € 16.95.
Johannes Brahms. Sonata Movement in C minor from the F. A. E. Sonata WoO 2. Edited by
Clive Brown and Neal Peres Da Costa. Bärenreiter-Verlag Urtext. Kassel: Bärenreiter-
Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH und Co. KG, 2015. Piano score and two violin parts
(both edited by, and one supplied with fingerings/bowings by, Clive Brown), XIII,
11/5/5 pp., BA 10908, € 10,50.
Johannes Brahms. Sonata in G major Op. 78. Edited by Clive Brown and Neal Peres Da
Costa. Bärenreiter-Verlag Urtext. Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH und
Co. KG, 2015. Piano score (fingerings by Neal Peres Da Costa) and two violin parts
(both edited by, and one supplied with fingerings/bowings by, Clive Brown), XLIV,
36/10/10 pp., BA 9431, € 13,50.
Johannes Brahms. Sonata in A major Op. 100. Edited by Clive Brown and Neal Peres Da
Costa. Bärenreiter-Verlag Urtext. Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH und
Co. KG, 2015. Piano score (fingerings by Neal Peres Da Costa) and two violin parts
(both edited by, and one supplied with fingerings/bowings by, Clive Brown),
XXXVI, 32/7/7 pp., BA 9432, € 11,95.
Johannes Brahms. Sonata in D minor Op. 108. Edited by Clive Brown and Neal Peres Da
Costa. Bärenreiter-Verlag Urtext. Kassel: Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH und
Co. KG, 2015. Piano score (fingerings by Neal Peres Da Costa) and two violin parts
(both edited by, and one supplied with fingerings/bowings by, Clive Brown), XLV,
36/10/10 pp., BA 9433, € 11,95.

With the publication of these editions, Bärenreiter has undoubtedly offered a

wealth of new insights and interpretive possibilities to performers, particularly
to those devoted to high textual standards and a nuanced, historical approach to
Brahms’s works for violin and piano, based on sources contemporary with the
composer. All five of these volumes share one goal: allowing today’s performers
an approximation of the style and aesthetic practiced by the musicians in
Brahms’s circle. The entire set of scores is supported by a supplemental volume,
Performance Practices in Johannes Brahms’ Chamber Music. Together these publica-
tions form a challenging and helpful resource.
As Brown emphasizes in Performance Practices, performers are now essentially
disconnected from Brahms’s performance tradition (p. 3). Already in the late nine-
teenth century musicians performing with Brahms and Joachim were challenged
by the degree of freedom with which these giants of the Romantic period presum-
ably played, and the extent to which they were able to ‘read between the lines’ of a
composition in a manner unknowable to others, which according to reports in the
1880s already pointed to changing conventions (p. 3).1 In fact, Brahms and
Joachim’s tempo modifications were too complex to mark into the score explicitly,

1
Brown cites Andreas Moser, Joseph Joachim: ein Lebensbild (Berlin, 1910), II:292.
484 Nineteenth-Century Music Review

which is why Brahms refrained from writing detailed tempo and rubato instruc-
tions into his scores (p. 3).2
Although Brahms’s performing conventions and those of members of his circle
cannot be assumed to be identical – indeed, Brahms’s own opinions are inaccessi-
ble for many issues – trying to reconstruct the practices of his extended circle is a
valuable step toward better understanding pertinent performance conventions.
According to Brown, before this approach to interpretation passed into extinction
in the 1920s, traces of it can be heard in recordings of Joachim’s students and mem-
bers of his circle, such as Will Rehberg, Robert Hausmann, Marie Soldat, Hugo
Becker, and Karl Klingler (p. 4). A prime example of what Brown gleans from
his sources involves the ways in which tempo flexibility of various sorts functioned
in this now-lost performance tradition. These included rubato per se, whereby the
‘stolen time’ was in fact returned in another place (by accelerating); tempo fluctu-
ation in places marked as such (meno mosso, più moto, tranquillo, or animato); tempo
modifications in places today not necessarily tied to tempo changes, among them
‘grazioso, espressivo, teneramente, or con anima; and lastly, tempo modifications today
normally associated with dynamics’, such as opening and closing hairpins and
messa di voce (p. 5).
Performance Practices includes sections on performance issues relevant to each of
the three instruments in a piano trio. Brown, a violinist, covers violin practices
including ‘nuancing the sound’ (vibrato), ‘expressive fingering’ (portamento)
and ‘bowing’ (pp. 8–13). Brown’s main thesis is that the Franco-Belgian school
essentially overshadowed the German school of performance practice after the
1920s – when Joachim’s students and members of Joachim’s circle no longer
exerted a strong influence on playing aesthetics. In effect, a ‘change in the aesthetic
of tone production’ took place. Brown dives into several performance practice
aspects, many of which he lays out in a manner easily translatable into practical
instructions. Among other topics, Brown disposes of the myth that vibrato in
Brahms’s circle was a ‘vibrato or non-vibrato’ affair (p. 8). Rather, left-hand vibra-
tions in various degrees of subtlety – more subtle than what we mean by ‘vibrato’
today – were but one manner of nuancing the sound, while the bow ‘played a much
greater part in the creation of a subtle and varied tonal palette’ (p. 8). At the same
time, the more conspicuous and continuity-emphasizing vibrato approach of vio-
linists associated with the Franco-Belgian school, such as Eugène Ysaÿe, – which
clashed with the vibrato applied in Brahms’s circle – was certainly not congruent
with today’s vibrato standards (p. 11).
Some of the most striking revelations in Brown’s discussion of vibrato arise in
his analysis of early-twentieth century recordings by Joachim, which he discusses
in reference to an overlooked report by a violin student of Joachim around 1900,
Marion Ranken. Joachim’s loose wrist, both left and right, Ranken noted, which
was capable of producing vibrato effects ‘out of dead stillness’ of a non-vibrated
tone, were sometimes most effectively combined with sforzando effects (p. 10).3
Soft dolce passages, furthermore, were rarely the site for audible vibrato but instead
hardly perceptible finger movements, which merely intensified the tone (p. 10).4

2
Brown cites Moser, Joseph Joachim: ein Lebensbild, II:292.
3
Brown cites M[arion Bruce] R[anken], Some Points of Violin Playing and Musical
Performance as learnt in the Hochschule für Musik (Joachim School) in Berlin during the time I
was a student there, 1902–1909 (Edinburgh, privately printed, 1939), 13.
4
Brown cites R[anken], Some Points of Violin Playing, 19.
 Score Review 485

Ranken’s account, significantly, offers new insights on how Joachim used vibrato
effects.
Da Costa’s contribution to the Performance Practices volume addresses the piano;
it includes sections on ‘melodic emphasis, texture and agogics’, ‘the evidence of
recordings: Brahms’ contemporaries’, ‘the evidence in written sources’, ‘pedalling’,
‘Brahms’ damper pedal markings’, ‘damper pedal use by pianists in Brahms’ cir-
cle’ and ‘una corda pedal’ (pp. 15–26). Da Costa offers an in-depth discussion of
general pianistic nineteenth-century performance practice issues and also pro-
poses some specific examples concerning the piano parts of Brahms’s chamber
music, including the violin sonatas and Piano Quartet op. 25. Drawing, in part,
on his monograph Off the Record: Performing Practices in Romantic Piano Playing
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), Da Costa discusses types of pianos and
the styles of performers and composers contemporary with Brahms.
Wadsworth’s contribution, ‘Brahms and the Cello’, reminds us of the impor-
tance of the cello for Brahms (p. 27). With the two cello sonatas and a number of
chamber music works from trio to sextet (and of course the Double Concerto),
Brahms notably contributed to the cello repertoire, even if, due to several circum-
stances, his relationship with the instrument is far less publicly known than his
dealings with the violin. Wadsworth offers a refreshing discussion of Brahms’s
encounters with Julius Klengel and other contemporary cellists and musicians,
which reveals at least part of the answer to the question why Brahms did not cor-
respond as heavily with players about the cello as the violin: he was, in his younger
days, himself a cellist, able enough to play one of the cello concertos by Bernhard
Romberg, a composer of technique-oriented repertoire (p. 27).5
Both Brown and Wadsworth give us a detailed idea about the styles of Brahms’s
preferred interpreters. We learn that Joachim, Hausmann, Becker – and Clara
Schumann for the piano – had an understanding of Brahms’s music and an
approach to their respective instruments that was conceived by contemporaries
in quasi-spiritual terms. Rather than getting sidetracked by increasingly powerful
‘sensual’ sound ideals, these players were able to bring out ‘the music itself’, as it
were (p. 32).6
Although details of exactly how music was performed and heard in its cultural
context remain elusive, this volume helps the interested performer to imagine
some of the particulars of chamber music performance in Brahms’s sphere.
Brown ends his epilogue with Richard Barth (1850–1908), whose playing
Brahms valorized, and whose accounts about his experience with Brahms show
that the early twentieth century was characterized by a ‘widening gulf between
Brahms’ expectations and the rapidly changing realities of early twentieth-century
practice’ (p. 33). Barth writes: ‘He wanted to know that all markings were scrupu-
lously followed. If one knows Brahms’s nature, one has to admit that probably no
composer marked things as precisely as he, and that, for those who understand
how to read it, everything that leads to the right conception and infallibly protects
from all arbitrary mawkishness is in fact indicated’ (p. 34).7 For Barth, a contempo-
rary, understanding Brahms evidently already required a special sensitivity. The
ideas and information to be found in this volume, if carefully applied, can certainly

5
Wadsworth cites Max Kalbeck, Johannes Brahms (Vienna, 1914), IV:383.
6
Wadsworth cites George Kennaway, Playing the Cello (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 194–6.
7
Brown cites Kurt Hoffmann, Johannes Brahms in den Erinnerungen von Richard Barth
(Hamburg: Schubert & Co., 1979), 31.
486 Nineteenth-Century Music Review

help decrease the gap that separates us from ‘understanding’ Brahms on these
terms.

Sonata Movement in C minor from the F. A. E. Sonata WoO 2

The F. A. E. Sonata is a joint composition by Robert Schumann, Albert Dietrich, and

Brahms, who composed the Scherzo, completed in 1853, but only published in
1906. The manuscript of the F. A. E. Sonata is titled: ‘FAE in Erwartung der
Ankunft des Verehrten und Geliebten Freundes Joseph Joachim schrieben diese
Sonate – R.S., J.B., A.D’ (‘FAE this sonata was written in anticipation of the arrival
of the revered and beloved friend Joseph Joachim – R.S., J.B., A.D’). The sonata was
first performed on 28 October 1853 intimacy of Schumann’s house in Düsseldorf,
for an exquisite audience – Gisela von Arnim, Bettina von Arnim, Robert
Schumann, Johannes Brahms and Albert Dietrich. The story goes that Gisela von
Arnim, dressed up as a flower girl, presented Joachim with the score, who then
had to play the piece and guess the composer of each movement, a task at
which he succeeded on his first attempt.8
The new edition of the Scherzo includes a preface, performance practice com-
mentary, score and critical commentary. The performance practice commentary,
which follows broadly the argument laid out in the Performance Practices volume,
is intended to clarify Brahms’s performance conventions for modern performers.
Articulation is addressed bar-by-bar. For example, notes with staccato dots, such
as in bars 14–16, could be played in different ways. Brown explains that Joachim
may have approached them like the opening – with a stroke ‘below the middle
of the bow’ executed ‘with a well-articulated bowstroke’ (p. V). But there is one
more possibility. Joachim may have used a stroke of a type often used by
Ferdinand David (who, as Brown mentions, was Joachim’s teacher), which
would be executed by using ‘a short and sharp up-bow staccato starting close to
the point of the bow’ (p. VI).
***
Completed in 1879 (op. 78), 1886 (op. 100) and 1888 (op. 108), the three violin sona-
tas emerged from Brahms’s most productive period, which saw the genesis of the
Violin Concerto op. 77 (composed in 1878 and premiered 1879), Piano Concerto
No. 2 op. 83 (1881), Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4, and the Double Concerto op. 102
(1887). On a personal level the years from 1880 onward were characterized by a
rift with Joachim over the latter’s divorce from Amalie Joachim, which perhaps
explains the moderate participation of Joachim in the performance history of the
sonatas. Only in 1888, when Brahms composed the Double Concerto and dedi-
cated it to his friend as a gesture of reconciliation, did the two musicians
re-establish correspondence and personal contact, though the earlier intensity of
their relationship was never fully restored.
The present editions of the sonatas (opp. 78, 100, and 108) provide what the dig-
itally available editions (notably those available on www.imslp.org) used today by
many young musicians do not offer: a performance practice and critical commen-
tary, and a detailed introduction and preface with information on origins, pro-
cesses of composition, pre-publication performances, publication, and early

8
Katharina Uhde, The Music of Joseph Joachim (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2018),
155.
 Score Review 487

reception. In addition, they provide comparative discussion of instructions by a

number of members from Brahms’s circle and points for reflection concerning
articulation, dynamics, portamento, tempo and rubato, fingerings, bowings,
arpeggiation (piano), dislocation and use of pedal (piano), all based on historical
evidence, and laid out in bar-by-bar detail for the entire sonata. The performance
practice comments, in short, are valuable and at the same time highly
user-friendly.

Sonata in G-major, Op. 78

The Sonata op. 78 is the only of the three sonatas for which the autograph (A) is
extant. Thus, Brown took the first edition as ‘copy text’ and clarified ‘some details
by reference to A’ (p. 34). For example, the autograph was consulted for clarification
with regard to placement of opening and closing hairpins (first movement bar 144),
the beginning or ending of slurs (first movement bar 211), the character instruction
(second movement, bar 97), accent placement (third movement, bars 104–105), and
even discrepancies involving a whole bar (third movement, bars 157–158), among
other entries, which are addressed in the critical report (pp. 34–36).
Of all three sonatas, the G major offers the greatest number of contemporary
sources relating to performance style. Several annotated editions prepared by
members of Brahms’s extended circle are compared in the performance practice
commentary. Notably, five of these editions include metronome numbers;
Brown adds another set of metronome numbers that were published in the
Musical Herald by an anonymous editor (pp. IX–X).9 As in the other two sonatas,
Brown finds both similarities and discrepancies in tempo between these early edi-
tors, with little discrepancy occurring in the first (except for Schultze-Biesantz/
Kähler) and second movements (except for Schultze-Biesantz/Kähler and The
Musical Herald), and more in the third movement of the sonata (p. XI).
Particularly fascinating is the tempo range in the first movement, from the average
of minim = 54 (early annotated editions) to a much slower tempo used in the last 70
years, which resembles Schultze-Biesantz/Kähler, ‘whose approach diverges sig-
nificantly from that of the editors with a known connection to the Brahms circle’.
The tempo of the last movement, Brown argues, ‘has been problematic from an
early stage’, as the tempos, which range from crotchet = 69 to crotchet = 104,
offered in the annotated editions suggest. The lower tempo range ‘seems likeliest
to reflect the composer’s expectation’, according to Brown’s detailed and well-
supported argument. As in the Sonata op. 108, Brown finds the Peters edition
(Carl Flesch and Arthur Schnabel) particularly useful as it contains many more
metronome markings (for the piano part) than the other annotated editions (p. IX).
Brown continues the performance practice commentary by providing brief dis-
cussions about various performance aspects. With regard to the use of the piano’s
damper pedal, Brown explicates Brahms’s markings in cases where they diverge
from today’s use. Rhythm and timing, furthermore, followed widely differing
conventions and aesthetics (pp. XI–XII). With regard to slurring Brown makes
the important point that Brahms’s slurs are often unusually long, indicating ‘phras-
ing slurs’; dynamics, articulation, fingering and vibrato are again treated system-
atically, before Brown merges, as in the other two sonatas, into a detailed
bar-by-bar performance practice manual (p. XII).

9
Brown cites The Musical Herald 831 (1917), 186.
488 Nineteenth-Century Music Review

Finally, Brown considers some rare and highly informative critical reviews and
violin treatises: A review in The Musical Times of Isolde Menges and Harold
Samuel’s performance of the sonata in 1933 (particularly enlightening for the
Adagio); an excerpt from Moser and Joachim’s treatise Violinschule (1905), and
August Wilhelmj and James Brown’s A Modern School for the Violin (1901); Ignaz
Moscheles’s Studies for the Piano Forte op. 70 (1897); Philip Anthony Corri’s
L’anima di musica (1810); Louis Spohr’s Violinschule (1833); Joseph Szigeti’s A
Violinist’s Notebook (1965); and Auer’s Violin Playing as I Teach It (1921) (p. XIX).

Sonata in A-major, Op. 100

With the Sonata in A major we confront a similar, if not slightly more advanta-
geous, source situation. Part of the autograph of the first movement (up to bar
268) is extant, while the engraver’s copy and proofs are lost (p. 31). As a conse-
quence, Brown consulted the first edition while clarifying details in the first move-
ment by referencing the autograph. The autograph raises a central issue concerning
all three sonatas: the discrepancy of articulation and dynamic markings between
the autograph and early editions. While the autograph is ‘rarely ambiguous’,
Brown explains that Brahms did not meticulously ponder the correctness of mark-
ings in the first edition, assuming that the experienced musician would interpret
the signs in the score correctly: ‘[Brahms] seems to have been relatively uncon-
cerned about the exact placing of such markings in copies and especially in printed
editions’, which caused difficulty for the movements for which the autograph was
lost. The placement of crescendo and decrescendo signs (i.e., ‘hairpins’), dots, and
the end of slurs caused particular difficulty due to disparities in early editions.
Brahms deliberately placed staccato dots inside the slur for portato and ‘outside the
slur’ for staccato, but printed editions placed them often inside the slur. Brahms often
notated the end of slurs ‘casually’ or not at all if, for example, the slurs were already
marked earlier at a similar passage (p. 31). When no slur was marked, Brahms
assumed, as Brown notes, what earlier pianists in the early 1800s had established:
that legato was the ‘default’. Thus Brown added some slurs and articulation markings
in the op. 100 sonata, where ‘they occur in parallel passages or where their absence, for
instance in one stave of the piano part, appears incongruous’ (p. 31).
The performance practice commentary, which draws on annotated early edi-
tions by Leopold Auer/Rudolph Ganz (1917), Kneisel/Bauer (1918), Schnirlin/
Kahn (1926), Flesch/Schnabel (1926) and Schultze-Biesantz/Kähler (1929), sys-
tematically covers aspects relating to 1) Rhythm and timing, 2) Dynamics and
accentuation, 3) Dots and strokes, 4) Slurring and non legato, 5) Pedalling and
overholding, 6) Arpeggiation and dislocation, 7) String instrument fingering,
and 8) String instrument harmonics and vibrato (pp. IX–XI). The discussion
concludes with a useful reference tool of a bar-by-bar performance practice
commentary (pp. XI–XX).

Sonata in D minor, Op. 108

The source situation for the D minor Sonata is complex. The autograph and various
early copies are now lost (p. 34). Thus, in this case the editor consulted only the first
edition, the separate violin part of the first edition, and Brahms’s personal copy of
the first edition (today at A-Wgm), which includes the composer’s amendments for
 Score Review 489

the first movement. Despite the missing autograph and early copies – or perhaps
even inspired by this lacuna – Brown has created an exceptionally rich edition with
a performance practice commentary that is novel in its reference to hitherto
little-used sources, most notably several annotated editions from the 1910s and
1920s: Leopold Auer and Rudolph Ganz (1917); Franz Kneisel and Harold Bauer
(1918); Ossip Schnirlin and Robert Kahn (1926); Carl Flesch and Arthur Schnabel
(1926); and Clemens Schultze-Biesantz and Leo Kähler (1929), all of whom,
Brown points out, had some ties with Brahms’s circle (p. VII). Brown explains
that although Carl Flesch’s fingerings are more modern than those one would
have encountered during Brahms’s time (as can be seen in Flesch’s avoidance of
open strings, which in turn, suggest continuity of vibrato), Flesch still employed
several parameters that trace his approach to Brahms’s tradition, namely his use
of portamento according to the ‘“old” portamento tradition’ (p. VII). The compar-
ison of these annotated editions supports several observations: although these
texts differ from one another, they are more similar to each other in their concep-
tions of performance practice, than they are to our modern approach; and where
they diverge from one another, the reader of Brown’s edition may be inspired to
decide whether to follow Carl Flesch’s lead, or Leopold Auer’s, or another
musician’s. Brown also refers to, and provides details about, a rediscovered
copy from which Fanny Davies played the piece at a private occasion in London
1889, together with Joachim. Her fingerings as well as other markings – albeit
brief and subjective, such as ‘not too much’ and ‘nicht eilen’ (do not rush) or ‘violent’
– represent a treasure for the performer due to their applicability.
Brown begins his discussion of performance issues with tempo and metronome
markings. The annotated editions take rather different approaches to tempo.
‘Metronome markings of the first movement range from half-note = 72–84, with
Schnirlin/Kahn indicating almost all this range (up to 80) as a possibility.
Schultze-Biesantz/Kähler choose the slowest, and Flesch/Schnabel the fastest
tempo, with Kneisel/Bauer in the middle (76). Even the slowest of these suggest
a basic tempo significantly faster than most recordings’, which are ‘between 58–
66’, Brown notes. The other movements, likewise, show divergences among the
early editors. Brown finds the Flesch/Schnabel edition – which contains more met-
ronome markings than other editions – especially representative. And although
Brown claims that ‘there is no evidence to suggest that these tempos have any
direct connection with Brahms’ practice’, they do mirror tempo and rubato
approaches of performers around Brahms (p. VIII).
Brown adds a few particular comments on tempo, referring to ‘rhythm and tim-
ing’, ‘dynamics and accentuation’, ‘dots and strokes’, ‘slurring and non-legato’,
‘pedaling and overholding’, ‘arpeggiation and dislocation’, ‘string instrument fin-
gering’, and ‘string instrument harmonics and vibrato’. Each of these topics is wor-
thy of discussion, but here only two them can be reviewed: ‘string instrument
fingering’ and ‘string instrument harmonics and vibrato’ (pp. VIII–XI).
In his discussion of fingering, Brown observes that while portamento has fallen
out of fashion almost completely today, it is indicated in the annotated editions via
fingering markings. Brown alerts the reader: ‘all shifts within slurs (except those
utilizing an open string) were expected to be heard to some degree, both upwards
and downwards’. One type of shifting was presumably not as respected in
Austro-German (and thus Brahmsian) circles; shifting downward ‘and sliding
with the finger about to stop the target note’ was looked down upon as ‘French’
portamento (pp. VIII–XI).
490 Nineteenth-Century Music Review

Brown notes that the use of harmonics – played by touching the string lightly at
an exact point, which will make a higher pitch sound, rather than the fundamental
frequency of the string – points to the ‘absence of continuous vibrato on the sur-
rounding notes’. Surprisingly for today’s performers, who often judge the sound
of harmonics to be glassy, airy, straight, and moderately soft, performers of
Brahms’s circle were of a different mind, using harmonics even in loud passages
and in melodies ‘mixed … with stopped notes’. Confirming the limited application
of vibrato evident from the use of harmonics, Brown observes that – although no
direct evidence survives ‘about Brahms’ attitude to vibrato’ – the performers he
most admired ‘used it with considerable restraint’ (pp. VIII–XI).
Lastly, it should be mentioned that Brown’s performance practice commentary
on the Sonata in D minor not only includes evidence from the early editions anno-
tated by performers, but also period criticism that pertains to performance of the
sonata. For example, with regard to bar 24 of the first movement Brown lets
Donald Francis Tovey, a close friend of Joseph Joachim, share his impression on
performing this sonata with Joachim, thus offering a glimpse of how the piece
was played when Brahms was still alive: ‘From Joachim I learned that at the first
forte [bar 24] Brahms made a decided animato which he might as well have
marked in the score; this of course implies that the tempo of the outset must be
broad, though, of course, flowing’ (p. XII).10 Brown explicates: ‘Tovey’s words cor-
respond with the description of the opening of the movement given by [Eduard]
Hanslick in his review of Joachim’s and Brahms’ performance on 13 February
1889: “The first allegro begins with a quiet expansive violin melody, in that appar-
ently decisive, contemplative mood that tends to characterize the majority of
Brahms’ opening movements. But soon we hear half-suppressed sobs from the vio-
lin and a violent assault from the piano; passion has broken through the deceptive
calm and commands the field”’ (p. XII).11 Brown concludes that the ‘sobs’ of the
violin relate to the ‘figure in bars 3–4 and 7–8, and perhaps also those marked
[by an opening-closing hairpin] in 11–12 and 17–18’ (pp. XII–XIII).
In sum, all five of these publications offer abundant material for reflection.
Where possible, Brown draws sensible conclusions, derived from extensive
research in numerous primary sources, but where necessary, he presents conflict-
ing evidence so that the final choices and interpretive decisions remain with the
performer who is thus more than well equipped to make informed decisions.
One brief comment on the durability and material quality of the editions of
opp. 108, op. 100, and op. 78 seems warranted. The enormously informative appa-
ratus – containing 44, 32 and 48 pages, respectively – is so generous that the stapled
binding does not hold up. Perhaps a better solution can be found for forthcoming
printings.

Katharina Uhde
Valparaiso University
katharina.uhde@valpo.edu

doi:10.1017/S1479409819000028
First published online 3 May 2019

10
Brown cites Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber Music (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1986), I:179.
11
Brown cites Neue Freie Presse, 15 Feb. 1889, 2.
Copyright © Cambridge University Press, 2019