Intermezzo in A major Op. 118 No. 2

Johannes Brahms · Level 5 (Advanced) · Romantic · Piano

The best loved of Brahms’s late intermezzi (1893), dedicated to Clara Schumann: a tender lullaby with a darker central episode in F-sharp minor. A Romantic-era character piece. A major, 3/4, 117 bars (about 6 minutes), complete score.

▶ Play this piece with the interactive score

How to practise it

• Listen first: the site plays it while the score scrolls.
• Wait mode: the score waits for you at every note, at your own pace.
• Tempo challenge: play in time, with a score and a map of the bars you got right.
• Let the top voice sing above the chords shared between the hands, and breathe at the end of each phrase. The piece starts with a pickup: count the incomplete bar before coming in. One hand sometimes plays two voices: hold the long notes for their full value and let the main line sing louder than the accompaniment. Triplets and other tuplets must be perfectly even: count them aloud with the metronome.

More pieces by Johannes Brahms

• Waltz in G major Op. 39 No. 10
• Waltz in A-flat major Op. 39 No. 15

Source : Mutopia Project · Public Domain