Score (194 pp.) + Parts (76 pp.)

Format: PDF

Composer: Johannes Brahms

Arranger: Christopher Kies

Catalogue No.: 086

Note: Bound scores and parts also are available for purchase. Printing and binding completed by Hopkins Press in Providence, RI. Contact us for details.

Program Note

I began sometime in 2013 making duo arrangements of various solo piano works of Brahms, and I first employed alto saxophone and piano, then clarinet and piano, and eventually I made arrangements for oboe, viola, bassoon, cello and violin, each one with piano. I enjoyed doing all of the above, but it was the violin that captured my attention most completely. I found that the violin was the most adaptable to the arduous demands of Brahms’ late piano works, and in the end, from 2015 to 2017, I finished 30 such arrangements for violin and piano. These pieces represent nearly all of Brahms’ short works from his late period. I was most fortunate that Paul MacDowell, a long-time violinist friend of my family and Boston free-lance musician, offered to help me complete this project by supplying bowings and fingerings to all the violin parts. Paul MacDowell, meanwhile, had for twenty years played violin and piano concerts regularly with my wife, the late Arlene Kies, and it is thus in recognition of their many fine collaborations, also to Paul MacDowell personally as well as to Arlene, that I dedicated the finalized books of the scores and parts. Also fortunately, Arlene’s younger brother, James Pepe, is a master printer in Rhode Island, and he provided me with beautiful, bound sets of scores and parts for use by other instrumentalists in the future.

C. Kies, February, 2018

Additional Information

Shown below are the 30 Brahms pieces grouped into 3 levels of difficulty, starting with the least difficult. These groupings were prepared by Paul MacDowell, and they are mainly intended to be helpful to violinists.

Least Difficult:

Op. 10, No. 4

Op. 76, Nos. 3, 4, and 6

Op. 116, Nos. 2, 4, 5, and 6

Op. 118, Nos. 2 and 5

Mid-range Difficulty:

Op. 10, No. 2

Op. 76, Nos. 7 and 8

Op. 116, No. 1

Op. 117, Nos. 1, 2, and 3

Op. 118, Nos. 4 and 6

Op. 119, Nos. 1 and 3

Most Difficult:

Op. 76, Nos. 1, 2, and 5

Op. 116, Nos. 3 and 7

Op. 118, Nos. 1 and 3

Op. 119, Nos. 2 and 4

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