Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, op. 83

Johannes Brahms enjoyed a bit of understatement every now and then, and whenever his second piano concerto was the object of discussion, he called it his “little” concerto – although it was more than clear that, with its four movements (including Scherzo), he was giving his contemporaries something truly symphonic to chew on. The press didn't hesitate long: soon it was being derisively called “piano symphony,” which, however, did nothing to prevent its popularity. Brahms himself and other pianists played the work everywhere in the 1880s, and the piano reduction was so successful that it had to be reprinted three times within three months after its first printing. The Urtext edition follows the text of the respective volume in the Brahms Complete Edition published in 2013. It takes the first printing of the score as the main source; moreover, both the autograph as well as the printed reduction provided further information with which engraving errors of the first edition could be corrected.