Van Cliburn in Moscow

TOSCANINI COLLECTION VOL 6 - B

Much has been written about the compositional history of the Piano Concerto in D minor by Johannes Brahms: how the composer initially planned a sonata for two pianos and then a symphony; how Beethoven's overwhelming legacy inhibited him; how the young composer also as a pianist ended up delighting his audiences in Hanover but unsettling them in Leipzig. Dina Ugorskaja, performing with the Brandenburg Symphony under the conductor and Siemens Prize recipient Peter G�lke, is now presenting this work in it's essence: a magnificent contribution to the music literature that even 160 years after it's premiere continues to be filled with enigmas and marvels. As an encore, Dina Ugorskaja offers a highly poetic rendering of the three intermezzi from Brahms's op. 117, a work from his late period. This very personal interpretation moves listeners with it's flexible tempo and an enormous spectrum of tone colors. Lovingly produced and recorded under the finest circumstances, this ambitious program featuring these so very different works is an enriching addition to every collection.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Brahms: Violin Sonatas

Brahms, J.: Piano Concerto No. 2

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Johannes Brahms was baptized in St. Michael's Church in Hamburg in 1833, and on this recording he returns to this site. Christoph Schoener, the organist and church music director at St. Michael's, honors his famous fellow Hamburg citizen with a special tribute. Three variation works by this Hansa town's musical great are heard in transpositions for the organ on this program, and on the mighty three-in-one St. Michael's Church organ the result is a dimension-blasting room effect. It is above all the echo organ that creates the special musical effect. When Schoener has the tenderest string stops concertize with the swell work of the grand organ in the Handel Variations, a moving one-of-a-kind atmosphere spreads out. The finely sensitive registration means that the Andante from the String Sextet in B flat major also assumes a new intensity; the arrangement is so perfect that it sounds just as if the music had been composed for the organ. And one more surprise: familiar orchestral colors from the popular Haydn Variations are interpreted anew in St. Michael's Church.

No musician of our time is more closely associated with the Brahms piano concertos than Rudolf Buchbinder. The patrician Austrian pianist, who even possesses copies of the composer’s autograph scores and piano parts, stated that “it requires a whole lifetime to become intimate with Brahms’s sound world and achieve the maturity that gives you new freedom as a performer”. He represents the living proof of that assertion. Buchbinder’s interpretations are further claimed to be “a modern-day point of reference” to quote the leading American critic Jed Distler on his first recording of Brahms’s piano concertos in the late 1990s.Sony Classical releases the live recordings of Brahms’s two masterpieces for piano and orchestra – one from the composer’s firebrand youth, the other from his mellow maturity – which Buchbinder, approaching his 70th birthday, made with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by his dear friend and esteemed collaborator Zubin Mehta. Mehta, whose ties with Brahms’s adopted home of Vienna are nearly as deep as the soloist’s, has cited Brahms as one of the two composers (Richard Strauss being the other) whose works, more than any others, inspired him to become a conductor.In 2015, Buchbinder and Mehta united to perform Brahms’s piano concertos with the quintessential Brahmsian orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic. It was a veritable summit meeting of great interpreters of these concertos. The reviewer for Vienna’s Kurier wrote of these performances, “what Rudolf Buchbinder, the Vienna Philharmonic and conductor Zubin Mehta delivered at the Musikverein already deserves the accolade ‘milestone’. Here were a phenomenal piano virtuoso, a no less outstanding orchestra and a deeply knowledgeable conductor collaborating to perfection and producing an image of Brahms that does honour not only to Vienna.”

Classical Music

Zubin Mehta has long been a constant in Munich's musical life. Mehta has enjoyed an artistic relationship and deep friendship with the Munich Philharmonic in particular for decades. Since he conducted his first concert with the orchestra in 1987, he has been a regular guest and was appointed the orchestra's first and so far only "conductor emeritus" in 2004. Twenty years later, the orchestra celebrated this milestone anniversary with a Brahms cycle, including all four symphonies and both of the piano concertos performed by one of today's most acclaimed and admired pianists: Yefim Bronfman.