Ulf Wallin and Roland Pöntinen made their first duo-recording for BIS in 1991 and have released acclaimed recital albums ranging from Schumann and Liszt to Alfred Schnittke, by way of Schoenberg and Hindemith. With the present disc they bring their most recent project to a close: a recording of all the works by Johannes Brahms for violin and piano. These include not only the three well-known and -loved numbered violin sonatas, but also the Scherzo from the so-called F.A.E. Sonata and the composer’s own violin versions of the two sonatas for clarinet and piano. Wallin and Pöntinen open the present release with Sonata No. 2 in E flat major, Op. 120, composed in 1894 for clarinet and transcribed for the violin a year later. As the clarinet part extends further down than the lowest note on the violin, Brahms made considerable revisions to the clarinet part, which entailed changes in the piano part, and consequently the printing of a new piano score. This is followed by the second and third violin sonatas, in A major and D minor respectively. Both works were composed during the summer of 1886 in Thun in Switzerland and are clearly related, even though they inhabit completely different expressive worlds.

In 2019, when Alexandre Kantorow, at the age of 22, became the first French pianist to win the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky competition, his program included no less than three works by Johannes Brahms. Two of these, Piano Sonata No. 2 and the Rhapsody in B minor, he went on to record for release on his previous, highly praised recital disc, which was awarded distinctions such as Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, Diapason d’Or, and Choc de Classica. The Brahms interpretations won Kantorow particular praise – the Guardian (UK) described them as ‘magisterial’ while the website ResMusica placed his sonata ‘among the great reference recordings of the piece – if not the modern one.’ There is much to look forward to, then, when Kantorow releases an all-Brahms album with a playing time of no less than 85 minutes.

He opens with music by a composer of a similar age as himself: Brahms wrote the Four Ballades in 1854 while only 21 years old, taking up a fashionable genre introduced by Chopin as late as 1840. The set is followed by the even earlier Sonata No. 3 in E minor which forms the center of the program. The sonata is of almost symphonic dimensions and it was indeed, along with its predecessors, famously described as a disguised symphony by no one less than Robert Schumann. To bring this stormy, impassioned album to a close, Kantorow has chosen a later, and contrasting work: With a lifelong admiration for Bach, Brahms in 1879 made a piano arrangement, for the left hand alone, of the iconic Chaconne from Partita No. 2 for solo violin – a composition that Brahms himself described as ‘a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful impressions’.

REVIEW:

When he made this recording in 2020, Kantorow was just a couple years older than the 20-year-old Brahms who composed the Piano Sonata No. 3. He finds a youthful quality in the sonata and the Ballades that nobody else has quite touched on. Kantorow's Ballades are mysterious, with ghostly quiet passages and mighty climaxes -- again, not what one thinks of usually for Brahms, but again carefully constructed. Only in the Bach arrangement does Kantorow falter a bit. However, he takes chances, and this is all to the good. If one needed any more evidence that Kantorow is a young pianist to watch, it is here in abundance.

-- AllMusic.com (James Manheim)

Music Director Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra bring to life the depth and brilliance of Brahms' two orchestral Serenades on this disc, recorded live at First Congregational Church, Berkeley, California. In the late 1850s, Brahms took on the post of choral director at the court of Lippe-Detmold. The position provided him access to an orchestra, and Brahms took full advantage of his good fortune. The two orchestral Serenades were the great composer's first efforts in the genre, and in the tradition of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, they are light-hearted, lyrical and sunny. The second is notable for scoring that excludes violins. In both works, color, charm, wit (and a nod to Classical formal traditions) are present in abundance.

For this release, OehmsClassics was able to convince the House of Hessen to engage in a small cooperation because the works heard on this album were personally dedicated to Princess Anna von Hessen. Rainer von Hessen has written the following in his preface to this production: "To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that both chamber works Op. 34 by Johannes Brahms have been united on the same album: his only Piano Quintet and the Sonata for Two Pianos. Previously, both works could be heard at a concert with the duo pianists Lucia Huang and Sebastian Euler as well as the Haba Quartet of the hr Symphony Orchestra at the baroqu eFasanerie Palace near Fulda. With this rather unusual programme combination, a long harbored wish came true for me, namely to hear both works dedicated by Brahms to Princess Anna von Hessen performed on the same evening: the Sonata for Two Pianos in F minor and the Piano Quintet, that resulted from it. This enabled us to sense how the composer increased the sonic attractiveness of his composition by means of refined instrumentation, hardly changing anything else."

The legacy of the Cypress String Quartet, which celebrated its 20th anniversary and valedictory season in 2016, is sealed by the ensemble’s final recording – the two String Sextets by Johannes Brahms in which they are joined by long-time collaborators, violist Barry Shiffman and cellist Zuill Bailey. True to form, the Cypress String Quartet applied innovation to its last recording: live in front of a studio audience at Skywalker Sound Studio. "A tender, deeply expressive interpretation" - The New York Times

On a number of previous recordings, the 40-odd members of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra and Thomas Dausgaard have shed a new light on the Romantic symphonic repertoire, with performances described as ‘tight’, ‘invigorating’, ‘transparent’ and ‘thrilling’. Complete cycles of the symphonies of Schumann and Schubert have appeared alongside individual discs with music by Dvorák, Bruckner and Tchaikovsky, as well as a recording of Johannes Brahms’s First Symphony, released in 2012. The disc was named Recommendation of the Month in the German magazine Fono Forum, while the reviewer in International Record Review described it as ‘an account to make one hope a complete traversal is in the offing’. Five years later that hope is nearing fulfilment, as the team’s recording of Symphony No. 2 is released. Composed during the summer of 1877, which Brahms spent at the idyllic Wörthersee, it is one of his sunniest works, often compared to Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony. It’s followed by the Haydn Variations, in which Brahms was able to combine one of his favourite musical forms – that of theme and variations – with his deep admiration for Joseph Haydn. (Fortunately, the discovery that the theme in question, known as the ‘St Antoni Chorale’, wasn’t by Haydn after all was made long after Brahms’s death.) The programme continues with other favourites in Brahms’s production, including his greatest commercial success in the form of three of the hugely popular set of Hungarian Dances for piano, here in orchestrations by Thomas Dausgaard. The album ends in similarly high spirits, with the Academic Festival Overture and its rousing and jubilant C major coda.

Begun in 2012 with the release of Symphony No. 1, Thomas Dausgaard’s four-album traversal of the symphonies of Johannes Brahms is here brought to a close with the composer’s final work in the genre. The E minor Symphony is sometimes described as Brahms’ ‘elegiac symphony’, and has been called ‘one of the greatest orchestral works since Beethoven’. Typical for the composer is the striking degree of motivic relationships throughout the work. This includes the finale in which Brahms demonstrates his full mastery in a towering Passacaglia consisting of 30 variations and a coda. The smallish forces of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra contribute to a transparency and clarity which bring out the finer details of Brahms’ compositional web. As on previous installments, the symphony is coupled with other works by Brahms. Included on the present release is another late work, Tragic Overture, which concludes the programme. These two ‘serious’ works frame some of the most rousing and ebullient music Brahms ever wrote, namely his Hungarian Dances. Composed for piano four-hands, the 21 dances became immensely popular, and Brahms arranged three of them for orchestra himself. Having made his own orchestrations of the remaining 18 dances, Thomas Dausgaard has recorded the full set for his Brahms cycle, with the final nine dances included here.

The two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms are in very stark contrast to each other. This is not solely due to the more than twenty years separating the works. Brahms had a preference for pairs of works with the same instrumentation, which he frequently composed according to the principle of contrast. In the case of the cello concertos, it is above all the character and mood of the respective pieces that describe the contrasts. In the version for cello, the Violin Sonata op. 78, one of Brahms’ finest chamber works, supplements the two original cello sonatas in a charming way. Daniel Müller-Schott and Francesco Piemontesi team up once more for this all Brahms program after the great success of their release of cello sonatas of the 20th century (C872151).

REVIEW:

Poetry, power, and passion are all here, to an unquestionable degree. There were more times when I was struck by the piano’s beautiful tone than the cello’s, but at 44 Müller-Schott has grown into the kind of maturity that still expresses the joy of music in the face of temptations to become a much-in-demand professional repeating the same handful of popular pieces. I haven’t previously associated him with passionate playing, but he’s struck a bond with Piemontesi, whose Liszt can be quite ardent. Every desirable quality is present here.

– Fanfare

It has long been my wish to record both of Johannes Brahms’s piano concertos for CD. In doing so, I have been able to build upon many experiences that allow me at this point in time to open myself up even more to the essence of these works, which move me to the depths of my being. Both works offer me something incredibly great, something that in my conception of things can hardly be further enlarged. Each of the two concertos fascinates me with its vast wealth of sound, its intensity, above all with its simply infinite emotional range. Highly dramatic developments open out into playful lightness of being. Time and again there are sincerely thoughtful moments, marked by deep serenity. The slow movements of these two concertos particularly fascinate me on account of those passages, which give us a glimpse into what is above and beyond the world we know. The Magyar in me senses many Hungarian influences. My engagement with the two concertos in the course of making the present recordings together with the Württembergische Philharmonie Reutlingen has enabled me to look at the above aspects with new eyes. These are insights that go ever deeper throughout one’s whole life. The process is never complete. The cathedral is too big for that. Andrea Kauten