52 / 128
52 BRAHMS_INTÉGRALE DE L’ŒUVRE POUR PIANO
The approachof op.24 is at the opposite pole fromthat of
op.35,which – not by coincidence – exploits the theme of
the Twenty-fourth Caprice from Paganini’s op.1. This is
the only work in Brahms’s whole output to concentrate
deliberately on virtuosity, as if he were seeking literally
to exhaust the resources of the keyboard. This time Clara
declared that it was a set of ‘witches’ variations’, while
Geoffroy Couteau remarks that ‘we discover here that
Brahms in fact had four hands – but over and above its
virtuosity, indeed through that very virtuosity, he gives
away all the keys to his language and thereby opens the
path for the interpreter’. For these ‘Studies for piano’, as
Brahms initially called them, however technical they
maybe, still lacknothing inexpressiveness; far removed
from Liszt, and underpinned by the great tradition
inherited from Bach and Beethoven, their devastating
mechanism always submits to the principles defended
by Brahms right from his first variations, to produce
extraordinarily varied and infinitely poetic tableaux.