While not his first work for violin and piano—an earlier sonata was known to have existed at one time, but the composer destroyed it sometime before his death—Johannes Brahms' Scherzo in C minor, WoO post. 2, is his first extant work for violin and piano. The Scherzo was originally one of four movements in a jointly composed sonata for violin and piano from 1853 by Brahms and his friends Robert Schumann and Albert Dietrich, and presented to violinist Joseph Joachim. Joachim's personal motto "Frei aber froh" (Free but happy) became the musical anagram that united the disparate movements. The Scherzo is written in the same fiery vein as Brahms' Piano Quartet in C minor, with his heightened sense of Romantic tragedy dominating most of the work, but the theme's strength and the rhythm's drive carry it through to a triumphant conclusion.

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