My new album “Brahms: Piano Sonata No. 3” will be released by Acoustic Revive on November 24th.
Following my previous album of Brahms’s late piano works, this second volume turns to his early creative period, shaped by youthful intensity and imagination.
Developed over several years as a long-nurtured companion project alongside my Japanese translation of “A Brahms Reader” by Prof. Michael Musgrave, this album is now being released almost simultaneously with the publication — a coincidence that feels quietly meaningful to me.
At the heart of the program stands the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, one of Brahms’s most ambitious early masterpieces, paired with Clara Schumann’s Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op. 20, written around the same period and closely connected to Brahms’s artistic world.
Three song transcriptions for solo piano follow next: “ Heimkehr” Op. 7-6 (arr. Jadasohn / Fukuhara), “Ein Sonett” Op. 14-4 (arr. Fukuhara), “An eine Aeolsharfe” Op. 19-5 (arr. R. Keller — world premiere recording). These lead into Brahms’s own piano version of the Theme and Variations, Op. 18b from the String Sextet No. 1, Op. 18.
The album unfolds as a musical narrative, each work resonating with the next and tracing the young composer’s emerging artistic voice. The rare Keller edition of “An eine Aeolsharfe” was accessed through the support of the Institute of Musicology at Kiel University, which oversees the New Brahms Complete Edition.
I hope that this album finds its way to listeners who share curiosity, tenderness, and reverence for Brahms’s evolving voice.
Exploring Brahms through both sound and scholarship has been a profoundly enriching journey — a privilege for which I am sincerely grateful.