I always enjoy reading anything you write about violin music, and your review of the Tenenbaum/Kapp collaboration of the Brahms sonatas is no exception. Likewise, I share your enthusiasm for the Heifetz/Kapell benchmark interpretation of the 3rd sonata. However, if I may add my two cents, I wonder at how the first movement of the first sonata-- the "rolling" chords of the piano notwithstanding-- can possibly induce the vision of a "large ship leaving the harbor," "large ship" being the operative words. In fact, what I love about that first movement is exactly the opposite in concept-- compared to the other two first movements, in my mind it is the most natural and organic, and consequently the least pretentious. To me there is a complete naturalness of weight and warmth in the opening theme. The opening theme is child-like in its simplicity and directness, and it makes me feel that Brahms, in those first few measures, was releasing his own inner child. The rapturous and agitated temper you mention in the development is something I begin to hear already at the end of the first theme's introduction, and this mercurial whimsy which constantly reappears, never completely disappearing, is probably what most reminds me of a child or even a teenager, but never an object so inanimate as a ship. Although I have several decent recordings of the first sonata, including Robert Mann's Gidon Kremer's, I think my ideas and appreciation must come from Bronislaw Humberman's heart-rendering performance, which is available on Arbiter. I'd love to hear you review it some day. Sincerely, hector aguilar