Sibelius's lines flow in a rich, warm glow of tone -- the whole concerto takes wings not, perhaps, as never before, but certainly as very seldom before. The Brahms is given a thorough-going romantic approach, full of feeling but also very carefully considered.

...[A] superlative version of the Sibelius... The performance Francescatti gives of the Sibelius is, technically, an impossible one: not even Heifetz plays the end of the first movement dead in tune, so it can't be done! but Francescatti does it. He also does everything else that can't be done with this concerto (as well, beginning to take things for granted, as everything that can); Sibelius's lines flow in a rich, warm glow of tone, his rhythms pulse, and, again, his chords are in tune. The orchestra are along with Francescatti, and they, too, have a rich quality of string tone and a pulsing rhythm; indeed the whole concerto takes wings not, perhaps, as never before, but certainly as very seldom before.

-- Gramophone [10/1965, reviewing the original LP release of the Sibelius]

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Francescatti himself is in splendid form. He has a bad patch just before the G major episode in the finale, but otherwise his intonation is good and his tone as sweet as ever. The slow movement is rather more expressive than usual, the finale rather more fiery. Much of the credit for this must go to the conductor, Leonard Bernstein, who can get from an orchestra a degree of rubato usually expected only of pianists playing Chopin. The orchestral introduction to the slow movement is an example. Some will find the way Bernstein points the end of each two-bar phrase too mannered for their taste, but, apart from the fact that it's clever to get an orchestra to phrase so sensitively, he certainly matches the style of the solo playing. In the first movement there are no tricks to interrupt the flow of the whole, and the music is played with impressive breadth and understanding. The cadenza is Joachim's. This is without doubt one of the best available versions of the Brahms Violin Concerto, and if you like a thorough-going romantic approach, full of feeling but also very carefully considered, this may well be the one you will like best.

-- Gramophone [12/1963, reviewing the original LP release of the Brahms]

Visions, the new release from the British-German violinist Caroline Adomeit and wonderful Ukranian pianist Nadiya Kholodkova, is inspired by the fantastic piano repertoire. Transcriptions, including eleven world premieres by Caroline herself, of works from the early harpsichord music of the Baroque era, through Classical and Romantic pieces, to Impressionism and music of the twentieth century (from Henry Purcell’s Hornpipe to Sergei Rachmaninov’s Italian Polka) show her complete mastery of the violin and her ability to produce an entire artist’s palette of colors. “…her playing has an infectious joy and rhythmic vitality… passages of crossed strings are so precise, and even in the most mercurial sections her intonation is perfectly centered…” (The Strad)

Charles Neidich’s fastidiously cerebral account of the Clarinet Quintet is exemplary, while the Juilliard’s interpretations of the three string quartets are the stuff of charismatic greatness.

Pathological self-doubt consigned twenty Brahms quartets to oblivion between 1853 and 1873. At forty, still awed by Beethoven (‘you have no idea how it feels,’ he lamented, ‘continually hearing such a giant behind you’), he adjudged his Op. 51 works worthy of publication, though Beethoven’s spectral presence lingered until the completion of his First Symphony and Op. 67 quartet in 1876. Op. 51/1, its turbulent emotions repressed behind austere polyphonic formalism, receives assured playing from the Britten Quartet. Here, and throughout this set, its taut, incisive manner, juxtaposing athleticism, poignancy and physical stress, seems admirable. However, EMI’s recording is closely focused and fails to exploit the ambient potential of St George’s Church, Brandon Hill, Bristol.

The Juilliard Quartet, heard in the acoustically inviting Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in New York, has phenomenal empathy with the Brahmsian idiom; its accounts are more eloquently considered, passionately argued, and are imbued with an opulence which the Brittens never equal. Brahms’s personal maxim ‘Frei, aber einsam’ (‘Free, but solitary’), the dictum of his majestic A minor quartet, assumes lyrically imploring gravity here; first violinist Robert Mann, among the great quartet leaders of the century, has seldom sounded so beguiling.

Charles Neidich’s fastidiously cerebral account of the richest fruit of Brahms’s friendship with Meiningen clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, the Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115, is exemplary. Neidich sounds aptly conservative beside Richard Stoltzman’s burgeoning RCA Victor performance with the Tokyo Quartet, while the Juilliard’s interpretations of the three string quartets are the stuff of charismatic greatness.

Performance: 5 (out of 5), Sound: 5 (out of 5)

-- Michael Jameson, BBC Music Magazine

Andreas Spreer writes: "No. 21, the 21st recording of Evgeni Koroliov for the TACET label is available! What I particularly love in the playing of Koroliov: his ability to work out under a veil of objectivity, faithfulness to the text and modesty details of such sensibility and expressivity that make me believe listening for the first time to that piece of music. The 19 Intermezzi by Johannes Brahms offer plenty of opportunity for that." Russian pianist Evgeni Koroliov studied at the Moscow Conservatory, and since 1978 has been a teacher at the Hochschule fur Musik und Theater Hamburg. He is mainly known for his performances of the keyboard repertoire of J.S. Bach, as well as the music of Haydn, Chopin, Debussy, Mozart, and Schumann.

Outstanding soloists: Donna Brown (Soprano), Gilles Cachemaille (Bass-Baritone) - A further reference recording of Helmuth Rilling and his Stuttgarter Ensembles Gächinger Kantorei and Bach-Collegium belonging to the series “Great Choral Works“ - „Brahms-singing with predictive dimension and forcefullness but in the same way deeply human in each phrase“ Fono Forum This "Requiem" is not based on the familiar text of the Catholic funeral mass, but is instead sensitively and knowledgably assembled from text from the Old and New Testaments by Brahms himself. Indeed, it was not his intention to pattern his Requiem after the Latin mass for the dead, nor to proclaim what he felt were false hopes for resurrection. Instead, “Ein deutsches Requiem” is a work of consolation for those left behind. This aspect is particularly emphasized in Helmuth Rilling’s moving interpretation. Donna Brown (soprano) and Gilles Cachemaille (baritone) are the outstanding vocal soloists, delivering well-profiled performances that are perfectly integrated into the overall balance of sound. Together with his regular collaborators, the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, Rilling delivers a performance full of gravitas that effectively reconciles the themes of death and mourning with a transcendent sense of spiritual consolation with a sense of immediacy seldom encountered in other performances.

"•The Rodin Quartet often present works outside the standard repertoire, but these four Music Academy, Munich alumni have much to say as well about the standard repertory. • On their label AMATI, they present the two string quartet masterpieces, op. 51, of Johannes Brahms. • Adopting their name from the great 19th century French sculptor Auguste Rodin, this young and internationally admired quartet have often appeared on disc, radio and TV, and embrace a wide and diverse repertoire."

...Oppitz turns majestic and impassioned..., qualities he carries over to Concerto No. 2, which benefits from his refreshing alacrity and clever balancing of the work's classical and romantic character...

--Victor Carr Jr., ClassicsToday.com
reviewing this the 2nd Concerto, reissued as part of RCA 60388

Johannes Brahms exhibited a noticeable disposition to paired works, composing 2 serenades, 2 piano concertos, 2 sonatas for cello and clarinet and likewise 2 string sextets. The first sextet, in B flat major, op. 18 reflects the work-filled time he spent in Detmold. Brahms began working on the second sextet in G, op. 36 in September 1864. That Christmas, he sent Clara Schumann it's first three movements, completing the work in May 1865. On this record, the soloist ensemble of the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Amsterdam plays both sextets.

BRAHMS Violin Concerto. Serenade No. 2 in A • Ernest Bour, cond; Zino Francescatti (vn); SWR SO Baden-Baden and Freiburg • HÄNSSLER 94.219 (72:07)


Readers should be aware that when multiple reviews of the same release appear back-to-back in the magazine, copies of those recordings are sent to the contributing reviewers blind. This means we don’t know when or if a colleague might be submitting an opposing opinion and, if so, who that colleague might be. In this case, however, I think I can make a pretty good guess that this release also went out to Robert Maxham and, based on our usually differing views about violinists and violin playing, plus what he’s said about Zino Francescatti in past reviews, I can almost guarantee the reader two quite different takes on this performance of the Brahms Violin Concerto.


First, let me say that of Francescatti’s recordings I’ve heard—admittedly not that many—there’s only one I really liked and would have recommended, had I been reviewing for Fanfare back then. That was his 1959 recording of the Brahms “Double” Concerto with cellist Pierre Fournier and Bruno Walter leading the Columbia Symphony Orchestra. Among my disliked Francescatti recordings was his Paganini First Concerto with Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic, coupled with a Saint-Saëns Third Concerto with Ormandy leading the Philadelphia Orchestra.


It’s hard to say exactly what turned me off Francescatti’s playing early on. It was at a time in the late 1950s, shortly after I first started learning the violin and listening to recordings that my ideas of what constituted ideal violin playing were being formed. Francescatti was touted as a virtuoso extraordinaire, a technician of such redoubtable accomplishment that he was compared favorably to Heifetz. Yet what I heard when I listened to Francescatti was a rich, silken tone that often turned hard and abrasive in technically challenging passages. More disturbing, though I couldn’t have verbalized it at the time, was what I now regard as a laissez-faire approach to rapid passagework—a sort of “close enough for government work” attitude, in which harmonics were missed, runs were uneven, and notes were often sloughed off. To my ear, Francescatti lacked the self-discipline of Heifetz and Milstein and the discretion of Oistrakh in knowing when to resist risk-taking that exceeded one’s limits.


Second, all of this may be of little relevance because—though Francescatti’s discography is probably more extensive than current listings would suggest—Columbia Records, the label for which Francescatti mainly recorded, decided that Isaac Stern was the more saleable violinist, thus curtailing Francescatti’s exposure on record, at least to American audiences.


Counting this current Hänssler release, to the best of my knowledge, there are five Francescatti versions of the Brahms concerto on record, all of them commercially available on CD. Compared to Oistrakh’s 15 recordings, documented in a 28:4 review, five seems like a modest number, but as suggested above, Francescatti may have been captured live in more performances of the work than are in general circulation; I don’t know. Of the five, however, this studio recording made in 1974 is the latest. The other four versions are Ormandy/Philadelphia, 1956 (mono); Mitropolous/Vienna Philharmonic, 1958 (mono); Bernstein/New York Philharmonic, 1961; and Leinsdorf/ORTF National Orchestra, 1969.


Francescatti was 72 when he joined Ernest Bour and SWR Symphony Orchestra of Baden-Baden and Freiburg for this venture. It shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise that his previously full-bodied tone has thinned a bit, and there seems to be a very slight but detectable right-hand tremor on sustained notes; listen carefully, for example, to the high A at bar 140. Also, some of the minor technical issues noted in his earlier recordings have now become real liabilities. The passage in chords beginning in bar 164, for instance, is choppily articulated and sounds a bit desperate in its grasping for the notes. Nonetheless, the violinist has lost none of his fearlessness in the face of danger. For a 28:4 review of Arabella Steinbacher’s Brahms, I plugged 24 versions of the concerto into a spreadsheet and then sorted them by timings. If I were to add this Francescatti performance to the mix, it wouldn’t be the fastest—at 36:03, that distinction still goes to Milstein with Fistoulari and the Philharmonia in a 1961 recording for EMI—but at 38:15, it ties Grumiaux’s 1958 recording with van Beinum and the Concertgebouw for seventh place on the list, still 15 seconds faster than Heifetz’s classic 1955 Reiner/Chicago account.


I hope I haven’t made this Francescatti Brahms sound worse than it is. If you’re willing to overlook a slip here, a mishap there, and a rough patch every now and then—all technical flaws which I believe were always present in Francescatti’s playing on earlier recordings—there are some nice things to be said of the performance as well. Conductor Bour and Francescatti share a rapturous vision of the score, bringing to it many moments of an almost ecstatic magnanimity. The lofty, angelic purity of Francescatti’s tone in the first movement’s post-cadenza measures (he plays the familiar Joachim cadenza, by the way) is absolutely transfixing.


So, even though I’ve expressed personal reservations about Francescatti’s playing in general, I acknowledge that he’s justly recognized as one of the 20th century’s great violinists, and I recommend this CD not just to Francescatti fans. Those who cherish Brahms’s Violin Concerto will also want this memento of what is probably the violinist’s last recorded performance of the work.


Brahms’s rustic, amiable A-Major Serenade is a generous addition to this already desirable disc, and considering it’s almost as long as the concerto, it would be ungenerous to call it filler. Ernest Bour is not a conductor I’ve had occasion to review before, but based on his contribution in the concerto and his reading of the serenade, I’d have to say that he has a real flair for Brahms. Unfortunately, Bour died in 2001, so we’re not likely to hear any more from him. But this is a glowing performance by a conductor and an orchestra on top form.


Sonically, both the concerto and the serenade are quite good, but the serenade, recorded four years later in 1978, is marginally better. It’s more open and has more air around it, which lends the serenade an appropriate outdoorsy atmosphere. Strongly recommended.


FANFARE: Jerry Dubins

The comparison here is between two very mature artists, always taking the broader view, and two very young artists out to extract the maximum from every detail. When reviewing the Barenboims (on HMV) way back in 1968, I remember being enchanted by the sheer beauty and speaking quality of so much in their playing, especially in the F major Sonata, yet sometimes worried by quite so much elasticity in phrasing. Jacqueline du Pré uses more vibrato than Piatigorsky in the interests of expression and her cantabile often comes across with more radiance as a result. Balance is finely judged by the acutely sensitive Barenboim: never does the piano dominate the low-voiced cello. Listening to them anew I felt that this is how Brahms might have liked to hear both sonatas played on one of his several visits to sunny Italy. Piatigorsky and Rubinstein are by no means tied to the metronome either, but because less concerned with detailed nuance, they convey more of the underlying solidarity of backbone—and perhaps the composer's North German seriousness, too. In the E minor work their slightly faster tempo for the first and last movements helps to suggest a stronger sense of direction. Piatigorsky's tone is very mellow even though less luminous than Jacqueline du Pré's. Rubinstein is marvellously sturdy for one considerably more than double Barenboim's age, but at this point I come to the crux of the matter. I sometimes wondered if he was fully aware of his own sturdiness, since the balance so often goes against the cello. It would make dull reading to cite chapter and verse, though nearly every movement in both works includes an example save the finale of the E minor work, where the counterpoint is finely matched. As so often, it's a roundabouts and swings situation when it comes to making a clear-cut recommendation. The best way out, of course, is to buy both versions.

-- Gramophone [7/1977, comparing the Brahms Cello Sonatas as played by Piatigorsky and Rubinstein with the recording by Du Pré and Barenboim]