Brahms, Sonatas for Cello and Piano opp 38 and 99.
This multi-component single output consists of editions and sound recordings of the two sonatas for cello and piano by Brahms, and an accompanying booklet on performance practice in Brahms’ chamber music.
Clive Brown, Neal Peres da Costa, and Kate Bennett Wadsworth,
Performing Practices in Johannes Brahms’ Chamber Music (Bärenreiter, 2015)
Brahms, Sonata for violoncello and piano op. 38 (Bärenreiter, 2015)
Brahms, Sonata for violoncello and piano op. 99 (Bärenreiter, 2015)
Kate Bennett Wadsworth and Yi-heng Yang,
Brahms, Sonatas for cello and piano op. 38 and op. 99 (Deux-Elles Records, 2018)
- Submitting institution
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Guildhall School of Music & Drama
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- BENKATA
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Scholarly Editions + Audio Recording
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
- -
- Year
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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3
- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The research material included written, recorded audio, notational, practical and theoretical material, presenting different facets of the Brahms circle’s convictions about playing style. The project therefore required a team of researchers with complementary skills, and the use of multiple research methods, reflected in the constituent elements of this output.
The research process for Wadsworth’s section (pp. 27-32) in the performance practice booklet constituted both historical and practical enquiry. For earlier sections on general performance practice and string playing (pp. 3-15) it involved editorial feedback. For the editions, the process featured collaborative discussion among the editors to craft and refine the performance practice guidelines ultimately written by Brown. For the performance practice commentaries, Peres da Costa and Wadsworth made separate lists of notes specific to their instruments and then collated them, employing a dialogic approach to drafting texts on overlapping areas of practice (e.g. timing); a similar process governed the final preparation of all parts of the edition.
While Brown and Peres da Costa had already published widely on the ‘what’ of 19th-century performance practice, Wadsworth’s personal research questions focused much more closely on the ‘why’, especially on which elements of musical meaning and feeling would have accrued (historically and, in the absence of source confirmation, instinctively) to which kinds of (e.g.) portamento. Accordingly, her contributions relied on a close feedback loop between the research processes outlined above and practical embodiment, pursued with her duo partner Yang across successive rehearsals and workshop sessions, leading to performance decisions conveyed through the recordings (and elaborated in one particular post on her ‘Brahms Lab’ blog, included here as supporting contextual information, see http://katebennettwadsworth.com/?p=82).
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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