A fictional hooplah over a Brahms Premier: updated 1/28/12

Brahms verso autographed cabinet photograph available at Harmonie Autographs click here

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of articles concerning a "newly discovered" piano work by the great German Romantic composer Johannes Brahms.  Most of the articles mentioned how conductor and musicologist Christopher Hogwood "discovered" the piece at the Princeton University library.  In fact the "discovery" was made by the auction house, Doyle's of New York City, where the album was sold last year, lot 228 in their April 20th sale.  The album described as, "Album Amicorum of Arnold Wehner", contained a wide variety of musical quotations from important composers and musicians of the period, Brahms being one.  I viewed the item myself at the preview and was quite impressed with the album and the care and detail which went into cataloging the book.   The listing within the catalog, carefully researched and vetted by the Brahms Society was as follows:

The Brahms quotation is an early and partly different version of the middle section Trio D from the Scherzo/second movement of Brahms' Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano op. 40, completely composed in 1865. The section is transposed from a Minor to a flat Minor. It seems likely that this was written in June of 1853, when the twenty year old Brahms and his friend Ede were in Gottingen (arriving June 4).

(Ede would be Edouard Remenyi the Hungarian virtuoso violinist who "discovered Brahms" and took him on tour as his piano accompanist.  Later Brahms would write his Hungarian Dances which were influenced by these tours with Remenyi.)

Doyle Catalog Listing Mentioning Unpublished Brahms Work

At the time the catalog was published, Edward Ripley-Duggan, the head of the rare book department at Doyle's was very aware they had an unpublished "manuscript" on their hands and in fact at one point had planned a premier of the piece at the auction, but as the auction was a long one, he had to scrap the idea. 

The Guardian Newspaper wrote the following about this piece this past week and the BBC Broadcast how Hogwood "discovered" the piece:

Article in the Guardian on Brahms Premier

BBC account of the discovery

The media in Britain which was picked up by AP makes it appear as if Hogwood made this discovery himself, a work which had already been identified by the Brahms Society as unpublished and complete specifics had been included in the listing when the item was sold.  My intelligence has informed me that Hogwood was presented with the album while visiting the Princeton home of William Scheide and was specifically shown the page with the information from the auction house.  It is also interesting to note, that a hastily arranged premier was made yesterday in Princeton and broadcast live on their radio station, WPRB yesterday, so that the BBC "premier" on the 21st would not be the first aired.  

Please see the Youtube link below.

End story is I heartily applaud the fact that this premier was made.  It is a lovely piece, quite haunting and it fully deserved an airing and I give a standing ovation to Bill Scheide for allowing it to happen.  However, the British media story which surrounds the discovery of the piece and has gone 'round the World while Romantic and reads like a miniature Dan Brown piece of fiction should be followed up by the media now that the facts are known.


Update:  The first performance and World Premier was given by Jakob Haschildt at a Brahms conference in Kiel Germany on October 8th, 2011.  At the same time a paper was delivered about the piece and an article appears in the Spring 2011 edition of the American Brahms Society Newsletter.  Further, a recording was made of the World Premier performance which will be released with the Brahms Gesellschaft's annual journal.  Please see the details below from Nigel Simione which we have further verified as complete and accurate.

Update 1/28/12: For those who wish to have the printed sheet music for the Album Leaf, please click the link below and you will be directed to the site pianostreet.com where you can do just that for free!
Print the sheet music here!