81. Wunderkind

Brahms: Piano Trio in B Major, Op. 8 Brahms: Sonata for violin and piano No. 2 in A Major, Op. 100 Throughout the history of music, society has been fascinated by the idea of the wunderkind, the child prodigy. Many of us think of Mozart as the archetypal wunderkind, but the subject of today’s podcast is not Mozart but Brahms, a wunderkind of a different sort. Brahms didn’t begin studying composition until age 13, but within seven years he was pronounced one of the most important composers of his generation, the heir to Beethoven. The piano trio that we’ll hear today is one of relatively few early Brahms works that remain. The composer was an infamous perfectionist, and he destroyed many early works that he didn’t think were up to snuff. We’ll begin today’s program, though, with a piece written much later in Brahms’ career, his second sonata for violin and piano. This piece was also somewhat atypical for the perfectionist Brahms, in that it was dashed off rather quickly, much more like the traditional wunderkind. Brahms was in his fifties at the time, but the trip that yielded this work was colored by a flurry of youthful inspiration. Brahms proclaimed the vacation spot where he wrote the pieces “so full of melodies that one has to be careful not to step on any.”