Brahms’s string concertos are indissolubly linked with the musicians for whom the works were written. He wrote his Violin Concerto for Joseph Joachim, and inn...

Brahms’s string concertos are indissolubly linked with the musicians for whom the works were written. He wrote his Violin Concerto for Joseph Joachim, and inn it he combined what a contemporary critic termed ‘the great and serious’ with songful lyricism, melodic beauty, and a fiery Hungarian finale. To mend a breach with the violinist, Brahms later composed a concerto with the unusual combination of violin and cello, the latter played at the premiere by Joachim’s colleague Robert Hausmann. Neither instrument predominates in a work of reconciliation that embodies both drama and reflection. Highly acclaimed Naxos artists Tianwa Yang and Gabriel Schwabe are featured on this recording, as well as Antoni Wit, one of Naxos’s best-selling and best-known conductors.

REVIEWS:

[Yang] plays the concerto with great passion and expressivity, highlighting many details and indulging in more sliding than we usually hear today. Behind all this I sense a directness, a desire perhaps to expose the virtuosic elements of the piece. Conductor Wit is also a musician who does not tend to linger, but I am not sure they are always on the same page. Yang leans toward aggressive playing, while Wit is more mellow—more Eastern European. If you like the concerto with a minimum of philosophizing, you’ll like this performance because it is very well done.

– American Record Guide

In Yang’s and Schwabe’s hands the Double Concerto enjoys an incarnadine reading which benefits from a sweet, close-quarters recording. What we hear evinces both concentration and brio. When a performance of the Double really works it communicates a nicely elongated storminess, as is the case here and with the classic recording by Leonard Rose, Isaac Stern, and the Philadelphia conducted by Eugene Ormandy.

Yang makes tense but re-creative work of the Violin Concerto. Elder statesman Antoni Wit has been facilitating with Naxos for many years. He and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin work in commodious harness with the two soloists.

– MusicWeb International (Rob Barnett)