The Three Intermezzi Op 117 are products of the final phase of Brahms’ creativity. They belong to the astonishing collection of short piano pieces that he composed in 1892–3 and published in four collections, Opp 116 to 119.
Like the quartets, the Intermezzi were written very much with Clara Schumann in mind, for she was destined as the first pianist to see them; but their moods are amazing as the utterances of nearly forty years of love and friendship.
The Op 117 could be considered a collection of lullabies.
The second Intermezzo, in B flat minor, is amazing music of plaintive delicacy beginning with a simple falling arpeggio figure that melts, with fluid grace, through a succession of tonalities: and the piece traces a miniature sonata design, with a more smoothly flowing second subject in D flat.
Development and reprise merge into one another through spiralling arpeggio figuration; and the coda finally imposes tonal stability in the shape of an uneasy pedal F, over which the second idea dies away.
Here is Nelson Freire to play this lovely music for you:
