Johannes Brahms

Love Songs op. 52

The well-known Liebeslieder op. 52, originally for piano four hands and voices ad libitum, appear here for the first time as a modern Urtext edition in a hitherto little-known form for voices and piano for two hands. Brahms made this arrangement himself in November 1874 after the conductor Hermann Levi, who had initially been commissioned, had rejected it. Brahms had previously immersed himself in the pieces again for the four-hand version without voice op. 52a, so that he was now able to create the new arrangement in a few days. Here, Brahms explicitly intended the voices no longer as "ad libitum," since the vocal parts are not completely incorporated in the piano part any more. In the spring of 1875, this version was published by Simrock, but it could not prevail against the popular original version and was presumably mainly performed in a domestic setting.

The present edition would like to invite musicians to rediscover, practically test and perform a still little-known form of the Liebeslieder op. 52. The musical text follows the new Brahms Complete Edition, on which the informative preface is also based.