A “small” concerto

“I don’t mind telling you that I have written a tiny, tiny pianoforte concerto with a tiny, tiny wisp of a scherzo.  It is in B flat, and I have reason to fear I have worked this udder, which has always yielded good milk before, too often and too vigorously.”

– Brahms on his Second Piano Concerto, in a letter his friend (and former student) Elizabeth von Herzogenberg, 7 July 1881.
 
Cited in: Leonard, Richard (1961) The Stream of Music. London: Hutchinson & Co., p. 273.

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