Search - Constantine Finehouse :: Backwards Glance

"Backwards Glance" instersperses two works of Johannes Brahms, his late Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118/2 and the monumental early Sonata in F minor, Op. 5 (the last of his three piano sonatas which Schumann had once described as veiled symphonies) with two compositions by Richard Beaudoin, "Qui Tollis" and "Les signes de ma faiblesse" (The Signs of My Weakness). Beaudoin's pieces cross-reference Brahms' works on this CD specifically and owe much Brahms' own roots in the German compositional tradition more generally. The name of the album comes from one of the movements of the Brahms Sonata, entitled "Rückblick" which means exactly that: Backwards Glance. It is in this fourth movement that Brahms looks back at the three earlier movements of the piece to borrow from their thematic material to create music that is new in terms of its emotional content and overall sound. It is in this same way that in his pieces on this album Beaudoin alludes to Brahms' themes while creating compositions that are entirely new, both in style and substance.