Waltz Opus 39 No. 15

The Anacrouse collection offers pianists, beginners and advanced alike, a wide choice of classical works from the Renaissance to the present day. It brings together major works of the repertoire as well as rarer pieces, and also offers transcriptions for piano solo or four hands, selected for their musical and educational interest. Each score, available individually, benefits from careful editorial work: a rigorously established musical text, clear and legible engraving, accompanied by a short biography of the composer and a note on the work.

The “Waltz in A flat major, Op. 39 No. 15” is one of the most tender and poetic pages by Johannes Brahms. It offers particular pedagogical interest for work on wrist suppleness and double-note playing in the right hand. This piece is ideal for approaching Romantic “rubato” and the search for a rich, warm sonority, while mastering the balance between a suave melody and a rocking waltz accompaniment.

This score presents the most famous of the sixteen waltzes originally composed in 1865 for piano four hands. Bearing witness to Brahms’s affection for Vienna, his adopted city, this fifteenth waltz was so successful that the composer himself made a version for solo piano. It is said that Brahms, a great admirer of Johann Strauss, once dedicated a fan to the wife of the “Waltz King” by writing on it the opening bars of this work, followed by the words: “Alas, not by Johannes Brahms”.