One of the curious features about Brahms is the fact that most of his important works for solo piano come from two periods of activity at the beginning and end of his career. His early works are represented on my new album by the mighty F minor Piano Sonata, Op 5, one of the few sonatas in the repertoire in five movements and very much an impulsive young man’s music full of romantic melodies and stark contrasts. Unusually for Brahms, there is a suggestion of an underlying narrative as the lengthy second movement is prefaced by a quotation from a German love-poem. Its opening phrase is transformed, even distorted, in the additional fourth movement with funereal-sounding drum-rolls in the left hand. The finale very much turns a new phase with its quotation from Brahms’s motto FAE – ‘Frei aber Einsam’ (Free but lonely) – relegating the love-affair to a thing of the past.

An undeniably powerful work with obvious Lisztian influences – composed in the same year, 1853, as Liszt’s B minor Sonata – Brahms’s Sonata never fails to make an impact in performance. Nevertheless, it represented a compositional cul-de-sac for Brahms. He would have quickly burned himself out had he written many more pieces along these lines. Far more prophetic of the later composer are the Variations on a theme of Schumann, Op 9. In contrast to many other composers who wrote variation sets, Brahms had an uncanny ability to enter the world of the composer in question. The spirit of Schumann himself is magically invoked here in the many abrupt mood-shifts and the often out-of-phase writing between the hands, a particular Schumann trait. Schumann himself had been admitted to the asylum when Brahms composed this work and a mood of uneasy foreboding, even tragedy, permeates the music. At the same time, a certain pianistic awkwardness is occasionally apparent, particularly in variation 5.

This awkwardness had disappeared by the time of the late pieces, Opp 116-119, as well as any narrative impulses. Brahms now seems like of a musical sage perhaps retrospectively reflecting on a whole century of German Romanticism. While powerful big-boned gestures still occasionally appear – witness the first Capriccio from Op 116 – the main challenges for the interpreter are much more subtle, teasing out the layers of meaning in much more continuous textures. The second Intermezzo of Op 117 does so much with very little material, its contrasting middle section being obviously a transformation of the opening figure of the piece. There is barely a cadential point of rest here in the demi-semiquavers to break the continuous flow, in stark contrast to the stops and starts of Op 5.

Yet Brahms conjures supreme tragic utterances in Op 117 No 2, and in other comparable pieces such as Op 118 No 6 – true ‘lullabies of my grief’, as he described them. At other times Brahms looks forward to the 20th century, such as in Op 119 No 1, whose first section consists of little more than interlocking descending thirds, remarkably prescient of the early Second Viennese School. He apparently told Clara Schumann that the grinding dissonances that result from these piled-up thirds should be played ‘as slowly as possible, as if in a continuous ritardando’. In my experience though, a more flowing tempo better conveys the feeling of unease. Whether or not he planned the great Rhapsody, Op 119 No 4, as his last pianistic statement, Brahms here seems to suddenly revert back to the lion-of-the-keyboard image of his early works with massive chordal writing and thrilling rush to the close.

I have always equally enjoyed playing the works from both ends of Brahms’s life and I hope that my new album will point out interesting juxtapositions and contrasts between the two styles.

Llŷr Williams’s album ‘Brahms: Early and Late Piano Works’ is available on Signum Records.