Brahms total

The Laaber publishing house has five such Herculean tasks behind it: opulent volumes have already been published on the complete works of Beethoven, Schumann, Mahler and Schönberg. And now Johannes Brahms, who has been neglected for far too long and who would not and could not find a place in the progressive thinking of musicology. Forty-six authors now satisfy the pent-up demand. With 160 works by the Hamburg master in individual articles. Listed not strictly chronologically, but according to opus numbers and works without opus numbers, they deal with the entire (known) oeuvre, which also includes the youthful works that have emerged in recent years Male choir songs in E-flat and B-flat major as well as a Album page for piano in A minor.

As the editors Claus Bockmaier and Siegfried Mauser mention, the interpretative approach is based on a whole "spectrum of methodological approaches, which differ according to the origin of the respective author, but also according to the genre-specific and historical developmental affiliation of the work under consideration". Sometimes individual work interpretations comprise four pages, sometimes, as in the case of the symphonies, more than ten pages. Almost every entry provides information on the background to the composition. The reader can then expect analytical observations, interspersed with comments by Brahms' contemporaries, such as Clara Schumann or his friend and biographer Max Kalbeck. The more recent reception history remains somewhat underrepresented. A short, but rich essay by Giselher Schubert compensates for this shortcoming. At the same time, Schubert, an expert on Brahms, argues for a stronger emphasis on aesthetic interpretations of the content, which above all Ballads Opus 10 for piano or the First Piano Concerto Opus 15.

Always well-founded, far removed from rampant entertainment fashions, the two volumes meet academic standards at every point. They therefore belong in every music library, but also on the bookshelf of every music lover. An extensive bibliography makes it easier to delve deeper into works which, in the case of Brahms, can never be dealt with exhaustively; the index of names, in turn, offers clues for a quick look-up - which will probably occur more often than a continuous reading.

Laaber-Verlag will soon be publishing further volumes in this series: on Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Claudio Monteverdi. In "difficult times", as the editors state in view of stagnating publishing business, these are risky but all the more commendable mammoth projects in terms of quality.

Johannes Brahms. Interpretations of his works, edited by Claus Bockmaier and Siegfried Mauser, 136 music examples and 11 illustrations, 1094 pages, in two volumes, hardcover, approx. € 178.00 (= subscription price until 31.3.2014, thereafter approx. € 198.00), Laaber-Verlag, Laaber 2013, ISBN 978-3-89007-445-0