Brahms's works for solo piano can be neatly grouped according to the four periods typically discerned within his music. The Sonata Op. 1, Sonata Op. 2, Scherzo Op. 4, Sonata Op. 5, Schumann Variations Op. 9 and Ballades Op. 10 are early pieces, dating from 1851 to 1854; the larger variation sets – Op. 21, Op. 24, Op. 35 – and Waltzes Op. 39 fall within the ‘first maturity’ (1855–76); the Klavierstücke Op. 76 and Rhapsodies Op. 79 belong to the ‘second maturity’ (1876–90); while the last four sets, Opp. 116–19, form part of the late music (1890–6). In addition to these solo works, the two piano concertos date respectively from 1854–9 and 1878–81, and there are of course numerous chamber compositions with piano. But the focus in this chapter is on Brahms's solo piano music, in particular four works serving as cross-sections of the stylistic succession outlined above: the second movement from Op. 5, the Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel Op. 24, the Capriccio Op. 76 No. 5 and the Intermezzo Op. 118 No. 6.

My purpose in isolating these four is not only to complement the broad-brush approach taken by enough other authors to make such a survey redundant here,1 but to explore the tension between what Denis Matthews calls ‘a definite plurality in Brahms’s musical makeup’ (three principal phases, respectively architectural, contrapuntal and lyrical in nature, defined by the use of classical forms in the early sonatas, the rediscovery of Bach and Handel in the variation sets, and the pre-eminence of melody in the late miniatures) and, in contrast, the stylistic unity or integrity apparent from the composer’s very first works for piano through to his late music. As Matthews comments, Brahms’s style ‘was to change little in a lifetime.