Brahms, 8 Klavierstucke Op 76

The Eight Piano Pieces of Op 76 comprise four Intermezzos and four contrasting Capriccios. The Intermezzi tend to be calmer than the livelier Capriccios. Brahms would return to this loose format in his final years to compose four more volumes of piano works in Op 116 to Opus 119. Published towards the end of the 19th cenury as the sun was setting on the Romantic period, they represent the perfection, no less, of the miniature form, as developed earlier by Schumann and Chopin.