Brahms’s Opus no. 100 is complete in itself, with its own face, its own meaning, like a fresco by Michelangelo. It expresses the yearning for beauty and happiness which is in man. (...)
Once, at school, a girl gave me a beautiful phrase by Brahms, in which he explains that what people call “his genius” is instead a totally gratuitous occurrence, something that is as though it appeared before me, even if it is inside me, but it is something different from me, and this is what makes me create. Our great artist friend Bill Congdon, too, emphasized this on many occasions. In any case, poetry, which is to say, creativity, comes through a Presence.

(Excerpt from the introduction by Luigi Giussani to the booklet enclosed in the CD)