BRAHMS • Sonata in F major, op. 99 (full) • Božo Paradžik & Maria Sofianska

A life-changing publication by Bärenreiter “Performing Practices in Johannes Brahms’ Chamber Music“ (C. Brown, N. P. Da Costa, K. B. Wadsworth) was a great motivation for us to continue with the Brahms project. Previously, in 2013, we recorded a Super Audio CD with 3 sonatas by Johannes Brahms. We spent several years preparing for the recording and immersing ourselves in the interpretation. We had a number of ideas that we had to try out first. After all, we have moved further and further away from the usual ways of interpretation and now we feel ourselves confirmed, since our musical instinct and gut feeling have actually led us step by step more and more to what has apparently been the historically correct way of interpreting the music of Johannes Brahms- numerous historic documents from the Bärenreiter publication confirm that. Sonata in F major, opus 99 is the fourth sonata by Johannes Brahms that we have interpreted together. This time we came very close to the historical performance practice that Brahms took for granted - with the exception of the vibrato, an expression technique that was used much less intensively at the time. Our tempi in general, the deviations and liberties from a metronomically exact rhythmic execution, flexible tempos, articulations and many other details in which this interpretation differs from the usual way of playing, are all a result of the very precise study of Brahms’ notation style, which was increasingly misunderstood in the course of the 20th century. The video was recorded during the general rehearsal (1st, 2nd and 3rd movement) and during the concert (only 4th movement) in Prague, Bohuslav Martinů Concert Hall of the HAMU on 23 September 2023. Originally, I wanted to use for the video only the live performance for the whole sonata. This concerto was very important to me, because it was the celebration of the 70th birthday of my dear former professor (and now friend), Jiří Hudec. But the event was very long, we have played at the very end and no less than four important cameras went out during the concert, either because the memory cards got full, or because the batteries ran out. Thanks to my friend Samuele, who operated the backup camera manually, one single usable video recording from the audience’s perspective exists. It would be very boring to watch a video of over 30 minutes with such poor choice of the picture. That’s why we only used the concert recording for the shortest movement of the sonata - even though at that point only one of the nice-looking cameras was still running. But at least we have something from the concert where we performed this wonderful sonata together in public for the first time. Fortunately, we recorded the entire general rehearsal earlier on the same day and filmed also the whole sonata with cameras. Originally, we only wanted to film the two intermezzi and scherzo at the rehearsal, but the cameras kept rolling also during the sonata. The video with daylight looks very nice. So the two recordings from 23 September 2023 are now the parts of this video. Special thanks to Gonzalo Jiménez Barranco, my former student and a great bassist (now co-principal at the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra), who literally saved the recording the general rehearsal as well as the concert the page turner, twice on the same day. We were able to play only the first movement in the rehearsal without him. And after the last-minute cancellation of a person who should have been the page turner for the concert, Gonzalo simply came from the audience to the stage and did it again! 🙏 Thank you! PDF music with double bass part for high C tuning (the only one that will work well here) is already released how long ago in the online-shop of my website. We hope you will enjoy watching this video. If anyone is interested in specific questions about the interpretation, please ask in the comments. I will be very happy to answer the questions whenever I can. Božo Paradžik