“Inevitable and devastating, it was the poignant vision of Bah’s Brahms, causing the audience of Rio to burst into tears, and after a short silence stand up and begin to applaud. I never heard a musician who can let pray Rio’s audience during a concert. Perhaps this guy was touched by God’s finger.”
Immanuel Bah
“Inevitable and devastating, it was the poignant vision of Bah’s Brahms, causing the audience of Rio to burst into tears, and after a short silence stand up and begin to applaud. I never heard a musician who can let pray Rio’s audience during a concert. Perhaps this guy was touched by God’s finger.”
-Jornal do Brasil
“A profoundly mature pianist despite the very young age, with the ability to dig inside the keyboard creating phonic and timbric effects that tend to ultra-high ground.”
-ABC Magazine
“Timbric esoterism, authentic emotionality and unscrupulous virtuosic bravery were the fundamental characteristics of a just sixteen years old pianist who last night impressed the audience of Venice.”
-Il Messaggero Veneto
Immanuel Bah is a twenty-one years-old Italian pianist of Jewish roots. He began studying piano as a self-taught at the age of 3 years old. At the age of 7 he gave his concert-debut performing a recital at the Petruzzelli Theatre in Bari, Italy. At the age of 12 he has been admitted to the Conservatory “F. Cilea” in the class of the famous teacher Cinzia Dato and later studied in the prestigious Academy “Incontri col Maestro” in Imola with Riccardo Risaliti.



He attended master classes with international masters such as Aldo Ciccolini, Jerome Rose, Francois Joel Thiollier, Leslie Howard, Benedetto Lupo, Bruno Canino. Immanuel has been awarded in countless international competitions such as Nuova Coppa Pianisti in Osimo, Ibla Grand Prize in New York, Lions Club Foundation Competition, Prize Antonio Trombone in Palermo, Prize Renato Sellani in Milan etc. In 2016, at the age of seventeen, he debuted at the Municipal Theatre of Bologna with in program 24 Etudes by Chopin. Later, he performed the Piano Concerto n 2 op. 83 by Johannes Brahms with the Philharmonic Orchestra “Mihail Jorah” of Bacau conducted by Ovidiu Balan and won the Best Italian Pianist Award in the Piano & Orchestra Competition “City of Cantù”. In 2018, at the age of 19, he has been invited by Miguel Proença, renowned Brazilian pianist, to get a challenge consisting of learning on 5 months the complete piano works by Johannes Brahms. He got it on September 2018 playing all repertoire in 5 subsequently recitals in the prestigious Cecilia Meireles Hall in Rio de Janeiro. Recently, he recorded his CD/DVD Debut with the emergent record label “Le Salon de la Musique”, publishing a worldwide premiére: Complete Piano Works by Johannes Brahms in Video. Among the important halls where he held concerts, stand out Amazonas Theatre of Manaus, Cavagnis’ Hall in Venice, Villa Pignatelli in Naples, Dal Verme Theatre of Milan, Municipal Theatre in Bologna, Skrjabin Museum in Moscow, Metropolitan Theatre “Astra” in San Donà di Piave, Salle Cortot in Paris, Eutherpe Hall in Leòn, Municipal Theatre in Palermo, Bolshoi Theatre in Joinville




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Immanuel Bah plays Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 1 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Piano Sonata No. 1, Op. 1 by Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms’s piano sonatas were among the 20-year-old composer’s first publications. They were written in 1852–53, with the slow movement of this C major Sonata, which uses the song “Verstohlen geht der Mond auf”, bearing the earliest date, April 1852. With this passionate and highly virtuosic Sonata, Brahms introduced himself to the greats of the musical world of his day, including the Schumanns in Düsseldorf. Clara Schumann wrote afterward that “... the whole is full of exuberant fantasy, the intimacy of expression and mastery of form”.
Dedicated to Joseph Joachim.
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Immanuel Bah plays Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 2 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 2 by Johannes Brahms
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The finale begins with a brief introduction in A major, the relative major of F# minor. The main subject of the introduction serves as the first theme of this movement, which is in sonata form and contains a repeated exposition. The coda of the finale, marked pianissimo and to be played with the soft pedal, returns to and expands upon material from the movement's introduction.
The Piano Sonata No. 2 in F♯ minor, Op. 2 of Johannes Brahms was written in Hamburg, Germany in 1852, and published the year after. Despite being his second published work, it was actually composed before his Piano Sonata No. 1 in C major, but was published later because Brahms recognized the importance of an inaugural publication and felt that the C major sonata was of higher quality. It was sent along with his first sonata to Breitkopf und Härtel with a letter of recommendation from Robert Schumann. Schumann had already praised Brahms enthusiastically, and the sonata shows signs of an effort to impress, with its technical demands and highly dramatic nature.
The first movement is in the conventional sonata-allegro form.
It was dedicated to Clara Schumann.
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Immanuel Bah plays Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 5 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Piano Sonata No. 3, Op. 5 by Johannes Brahms
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The Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5 of Johannes Brahms was written in 1853 and published the following year. The sonata is unusually large, consisting of five movements, as opposed to the traditional three or four. When he wrote this piano sonata, the genre was seen by many to be past its heyday. Brahms, enamored of Beethoven, composed Piano Sonata No. 3 with a masterful combination of free Romantic spirit and strict classical architecture. As a further testament to Brahms' affinity for Beethoven, the Piano Sonata is infused with the instantly recognizable motive from Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 during the first, third, and fourth movements.[citation needed] Composed in Düsseldorf, it marks the end of his cycle of three sonatas, and was presented to Robert Schumann in November of that year; it was the last work that Brahms submitted to Schumann for commentary. Brahms was barely 20 years old at its composition.
The piece is dedicated to Countess Ida von Hohenthal of Leipzig. -
Immanuel Bah plays Scherzo Op. 4 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Scherzo Op. 4 by Johannes Brahms
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Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op.9 - Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, Op.9 - Johannes Brahms
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Brahms composed his Variations on a Theme of Robert Schumann, Opus 9, in the spring and summer of 1854. He presented Clara Schumann with a fair-copy manuscript on 15 June, four days after the birth of her son Felix; on 12 August followed a supplementary folio containing variations 10 and 11, composed subsequently and entitled “Rose und Heliotrop haben geduftet” (rose and heliotrope smelled sweet).
The theme comes from the fourth of Schumann’s Op 99 Bunte Blätter—and is the same theme as Clara, herself an accomplished composer, had chosen for her own set of Variations, Op 20, composed the previous year. But it is Robert Schumann who chiefly presides over Brahms’s work: there are stylistic and textural reminiscences of several of his other works, and the variation techniques as such, based especially on the free melodic transformations of the theme or its bass in ‘fantasy’ style, show Brahms absorbing some of Schumann’s most personal innovations. (In the manuscript, though not as published, many of the individual variations are signed: the more lyrical ones with ‘B’—for Brahms—and the faster, more ardent ones with ‘Kr’—for ‘Johannes Kreisler Junior’, the romantic alter ego Brahms had invented for himself while still a teenager, after the protagonist of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s novel Kater Murr. This is a clear emulation of Schumann’s ascription of different parts of his Davidsbündlertänze to ‘Eusebius’ and ‘Florestan’.)
The first four variations adhere to the plaintive theme’s twenty-four-bar outline, and the first eight to its key (F sharp minor); but as the work proceeds Brahms alters tonality and proportion freely. Throughout, he shows great resource in presenting a varied sequence of musical character and mood—though all is tinged with varying gradations of melancholy. Variations 1–7 make up a structural unit. Against the sadness inherent in the theme itself they make progressively more vigorous attempts towards positive activity, climaxed by the passionate Allegro of variation 6—only to be brought short by the numbed stillness of No 7. No 8 then reintroduces the theme in a serenade-like evocation of its original shape, and in the windswept variation 9 the key shifts to B minor, with an allusion to Schumann’s Bunte Blätter No 5, a companion-piece to the one from which the theme derives.
The song-like variation 10 (in the manuscript Brahms called it ‘Fragrance of Rose and Heliotrope’) brings a warm shift to D major and at its final cadence quotes the ‘Theme by Clara Wieck’ on which Schumann based his Op 5 Impromptus. The delicate variation 11 is transitional in character, leading to the staccato No 12, the toccata-like 13, and the nocturnal 14, with its close and plangent canon. The penultimate variation is an Adagio in the tonic major (though written as G flat): a long-spanned augmentation of the theme tolls out in canon between treble and bass, sonorous arpeggios spanning the divide like an Aeolian harp. Finally, variation 16 is a very slow, stark, almost skeletal coda, the melody fragmented into poignant chordal sighs, conveying a mood of infinite regret. -
Immanuel Bah plays Ballades Op. 10 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Ballades Op. 10 by Johannes Brahms
Listen to Francesco Comito talking about Ballades op 10 by Johannes Brahms! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ7MfHAd96w
The Ballades, Op. 10, are lyrical piano pieces written by Johannes Brahms during his youth. They were dated 1854 and were dedicated to his friend Julius Otto Grimm. Their composition coincided with the beginning of the composer's lifelong affection for Clara Schumann, the wife of Robert Schumann, who was helping Brahms launch his career. Frédéric Chopin had written the last of his famous ballades only 12 years earlier, but Brahms approached the genre differently from Chopin, choosing to take its origin in narrative poetry more literally.
Brahms's ballades are arranged in two pairs of two, the members of each pair being in parallel keys. The first ballade was inspired by a Scottish poem "Edward" found in a collection Stimmen der Völker in ihren Liedern compiled by Johann Gottfried Herder. It is also one of the best examples of Brahms's bardic or Ossianic style; its open fifths, octaves, and simple triadic harmonies are supposed to evoke the sense of a mythological past.
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Immanuel Bah plays Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21, No. 1 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21, No. 1 by Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms loved variation form. This is clear from the number of standalone variation sets he composed, as well as the numerous times he turned to variation form for a movement of a sonata or other work. All of these pieces are quite fine, but there’s something about Op. 21, No. 1 that I keep coming back to. Most of its duration occupies an inward, searching space that’s really appealing and hard to leave. Also notable is Brahms’s choice to write an original theme, rather than meditate on a tune of Handel, Haydn, Paganini, or his friend Robert Schumann (that particular set is also very personal, for different specific reasons). The other half of Op. 21 is yet another set, the energetic Variations on a Hungarian Folk Song.
There’s a bigger context to Brahms’ variation explorations. He made no secret that he felt the weight of Beethoven’s shadow, and this piece may have been an attempt to truly master a form for which Beethoven had set an extremely high bar. The Arietta from Beethoven’s Op. 111 sonata is the most advanced and transcendent of all his variations, but Brahms, in his Variations on an Original Theme, achieved some of the same consoling, spirit-cleansing effects as that piece.
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Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a Hungarian Song, Op. 21 No. 2 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a Hungarian Song, Op. 21 No. 2 by Johannes Brahms
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In the years following the composition of his three sonatas in 1851–54, Brahms concentrated his piano output on sets of variations and groups of shorter pieces—and the first representatives of those genres are already powerful indications of his mastery in these smaller forms. The art of variation was one that he had absorbed very early, partly perhaps from his piano teacher Eduard Marxsen, who himself composed many works in variation form, and he came to consider himself something of a connoisseur of variation technique.
Apart from the brief sets of variations on folksongs which constitute the slow movements of his first two piano sonatas, the earliest (and simplest) of Brahms’s existing sets of piano variations is the Variations on a Hungarian Song, Op 21 No 2, composed in 1853 but only published eight years later. The work is based on a rugged eight-bar melody, rhythmically enlivened by its alternating bars of 3/4 and 4/4, which Brahms probably derived from his Hungarian violinist-friend Ede Reményi during their concert tour together in the spring of that year.
There are thirteen variations in all, plus a finale: the obstacle to variation posed by the tune’s rhythmic asymmetry was perhaps what attracted Brahms in the first place. His first eight variations retain its metrical irregularity, and the theme remains throughout as a kind of cantus firmus, though often subtly transformed—as in the ‘gypsy’ colouring of variation 5, whose repeated notes and rhythmic hesitations evoke the sonority of the cimbalom and also (perhaps only from similarity of inspiration) passages in the Hungarian Rhapsodies of Liszt. From the ninth variation onward Brahms standardizes the metre to two beats in the bar, though he keeps the eight-bar structure. However the last variation finally breaks free of these confines and develops into an extended and increasingly brilliant finale at doubled speed. This entails further variations, and culminates in a triumphant restatement of the Hungarian theme. -
Immanuel Bah plays Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Händel Op. 24 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Händel Op. 24 by Johannes Brahms
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"𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐟𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐢𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐢𝐭 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐥𝐲 𝐢𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐲 𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬" - Brahms (April 1862)
"I made variations for your birthday that you still haven't heard and that you should have been practicing for your concerts for a long time." - Brahms to Clara Schumann
An entry in Clara Schumann's diary about the Handel Variations gives an idea of how close the relationship between her and Brahms was, as well as Brahms's sometimes extraordinary insensitivity:
"On Dec 7th I gave another soirée, at which I played Johannes' Handel Variations. I was in agonies of nervousness, but I played them well all the same, and they were much applauded. Johannes, however, hurt me very much by his indifference. He declared that he could no longer bear to hear the variations, it was altogether too dreadful for him to listen to anything of his own and to have to sit by and do nothing. Although I can well understand this feeling, I cannot help finding it hard when one has devoted all one's powers to a work, and the composer himself has not a kind word for it."
The Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24, is a work for solo piano written in 1861. It consists of a set of twenty-five variations and a concluding fugue, all based on a theme from George Frideric Handel's Harpsichord Suite No. 1 in B♭ major, HWV 434. Johannes Brahms took an active interest in Baroque music throughout his life. The variations allow for iridescent colours and moods in the style of Beethoven’s characteristic variations. In keeping with the source, however, the work also features allusions to Baroque models – embellishments, pedal points – and ends in a grandly laid-out fugue with a triumphant build-up. Opus 24 unquestionably deserves its reputation as the composer’s most important variation cycle. -
Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a theme by Paganini, Op 35 I & II books by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Variations on a theme by Paganini, Op 35 I & II books by Johannes Brahms
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In the 19th century, Nicolò Paganini was the embodiment of the virtuoso. Many composers used his musical themes for their own creative work. Johannes Brahms likewise did not hesitate to use a work by Paganini the violin virtuoso as the basis for a composition for his own instrument, the piano, using the Capriccio no. 24 in a minor from Paganini’s op. 1 as his model. Brahms initially viewed the Variations, composed in 1862/63, merely as a “finger exercise” for himself, and had no intention of publishing them. After several years he fortunately decided otherwise, and thus with this Urtext edition pianists who are Brahms aficionados can enjoy an unusual virtuoso masterpiece. In contrast to the variations on the same theme by Chopin, Schumann and Liszt, those by Brahms offer a much richer, more novel spectrum of pianistic variations. Whether players find them to be “Witch's Variations”, as did Clara Schumann, is a matter for them.
Brahms’s variations open up a whole world of interpretative challenges, and take technical problems as the point of departure for expressive recreation. They include studies in double sixths, double thirds, huge leaps between the hands or with one hand. There are trills at the top of wide-spread chords, polyrhythms between the parts, octave studies, octave tremolos. Other variations explore staccato accompaniments against legato phrasing, glissandi, rapid contrary motion, and swooping arpeggios against held notes. During many of the variations the figuration is systematically transferred from right hand to left, and vice-versa. Not that each variation confines itself to one technical feature; several may be combined and in both books the final variation is welded to an extended three-part coda, covering an even larger range of difficult techniques and bringing each book to an end in scintillating style.
Generally speaking, in Book I the focus is on bravura writing. Technical demands occupy the music’s foreground, leaving scant space for Brahms’s habitual melodic developments; nevertheless, the delicate arabesques of the major-key variation 12, and the Hungarian accents of No 13, with its ‘gypsy’ glissandi, are delightful. Book II is somewhat gentler in character, with compositional virtues more predominant. The dreamy waltz of variation 4, the skittish arpeggios of No 6 with its ‘demonic’ crushed semitones, the ‘violinistic’ No 8 with its pizzicato effects, the cool nocturne of No 12 (the only variation in either book that strays from the orbit of A minor/major, into F), and the gently cascading thirds of No 13—these all combine to make Book II the more satisfying from a purely musical standpoint. Taken as a whole, however, the Paganini Variations is a stunning demonstration of Brahms’s compositional skills. -
Immanuel Bah plays 8 Klavierstücke, Op.76 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays 8 Klavierstücke, Op.76 by Johannes Brahms
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"𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐟𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐩𝐢𝐞𝐜𝐞𝐬, 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲. 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐞 𝐬𝐨 𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐜𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐂𝐡𝐨𝐩𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐢𝐬 𝐚 𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦."
- Theodor Billroth, a close friend .
During his stay in the lovely village of Pörtschach in the summer of 1879, Brahms worked diligently on his Violin Concerto, but he also returned to composing piano pieces, resulting in the Klavierstücke, op. 76. He had produced no piano works for public consumption in fifteen years, but had not abandoned his principal instrument completely as seen by the first of these pieces, which he had originally presented to Clara Schumann as a birthday present in 1871. Having permanently left behind the monumental sonatas and variation sets of his earlier period, he took up the thread of “miniatures,” begun with the Opus 10 Ballades and which would culminate in the late great piano pieces, opp. 116–119. He found such shorter pieces perfect for exploring a myriad of subtle textures and nuances of mood. And, as it turns out, he had not abandoned the variation techniques that fascinated him at all periods of his life—he had simply refined them.
The eight Klavierstücke, op. 76, are divided into two main types: the faster, more extroverted Capriccios—Nos. 1, 2, 5, and 8—and the slower, more introspective Intermezzos—Nos. 3, 4, 6, and 7. Brahms invented such a variety of characters within each type, however, that the designations remain only loose categorizations. The first Capriccio, in F-sharp minor, and the second, in B minor, for example, could hardly be more different. The first is a swirling, turbulent piece, whereas the famous second Capriccio presents a lighthearted, sometimes impish demeanor. Brahms’s friend Elisabet von Herzogenberg, from whom he frequently solicited opinions on his music, said the F-sharp minor Capriccio was her favorite, but she also loved playing the second.
1 - Capriccio in f-sharp minor
2 - Capriccio in b minor
3 - Intermezzo in A-flat major
4 - Intermezzo in B-flat major
5 - Capriccio in c-sharp minor
6 - Intermezzo in A major
7 - Intermezzo in a minor
8 - Capriccio in C major
Interesting fact :
The composer was in no hurry at all to have the pieces printed, even though his publisher Fritz Simrock had repeatedly inquired about them from August 1878, and, with typically ironic comments, increasingly pressed for their publication. Thus for example he wrote on 6 December 1878: “If the piano pieces do not arrive soon, I shall apply to requisition your furniture – and by the way there should be established a ‘Society against Cruelty to Publishers’ in the manner of the ‘Society against Cruelty to Animals’ – ‘pooh’: you should be ashamed to submit me to this rack of torture, deprived of your songs and piano pieces – how many volumes must you send to set things right again?”
(Johannes Brahms und Fritz Simrock, Weg einer Freundschaft: Briefe des Verlegers an den Komponisten, ed. by Kurt Stephenson, Hamburg, 1961, p. 132). Around the beginning of November
1878 Brahms seriously considered publishing the pieces, but then delayed again . Alluding to the
composer, pianist and arranger Theodor Kirchner, Brahms asked Simrock on 31 October, with regard to possible titles: “Do you have a title!??!!??!?: ‘From all the countries of the world’ would be the
most sincere, ‘Kirchneriana’ the funniest, can you think of one? Caprices and Intermezzi or Phantasies would be the correct one, if that worked in regard to the different word endings. Something that says a similar thing! Or something very simple!” (Brahms Briefwechsel X, pp. 91 f.). He finally sent his publisher the engraver’s copy of the pieces in early February 1879, with the neutral title “Klavierstücke”. Brahms read proofs of the pieces that same month, after which they appeared in print shortly before mid-March 1879, in two volumes. -
Immanuel Bah plays Two Rhapsodies, Op.79 by Johannes Brahms
Immanuel Bah plays Two Rhapsodies, Op.79 by Johannes Brahms