This is Volume 2 in our series devoted to the works for solo\npiano by Johannes Brahms, with the acclaimed pianist Barry Douglas.\nSince winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International\nPiano Competition in Moscow, Douglas has established a major\ninternational career, and his reputation as a pianist and conductor\ncontinues to grow.

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Brahms wrote his set of four Ballades, Op. 10 (of which Nos 2\nand 3 are included on this disc) at the age of twenty-one, and at a\ntime of much personal upheaval. His friend and patron Schumann had\nattempted suicide and been confined to a sanatorium near Bonn, and\nBrahms had been thrust into the role of protector and comforter of\nSchumann’s wife, Clara, while coming to terms with his own strong\nfeelings for her. Reflective of the difficult situation, these\nBallades display a deep-felt blend of the dramatic and the\nlyrical.

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A few months before he composed the Ballades, during his stay\nwith the Schumanns in October 1853, Brahms completed a new piano\nsonata with which he had been struggling throughout the spring and\nsummer of that year. Published as his Sonata No. 3, it would remain\nhis single largest keyboard composition. It unites aspects of his\ntwo previous sonatas – the classical features of No. 1 with the\nromantic, fantasia-like character of No. 2 – and surpasses both of\nthem in virtuosity and structural command.

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Brahms’s collections of short piano pieces, issued as Op. 116 –\n19, were among his final compositions for piano, and albeit a few\nof them provide brief glimpses of the old energy and fire, most are\nreflective, and deeply introspective in character. This was music\nthat Brahms wrote to play for himself, or at the most to a few\nclose friends. In fact, Clara Schumann was the first to see these\nin their manuscript form.

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