Classical Music

Classical Music

Twice Brahms worked on his first piano trio [op. 8]: In 1854, when he put it to paper and 1889, when he worked on it again and thoroughly revised it. Both versions have their merit and, more importantly still, their own specific musical charm. This applies particularly to the finely chiseled interpretations by the Abegg Trio (Fono Forum)

Are there really that many piano trios by Brahms? There are indeed, even though one work on this CD could not prove this. The Abegg Trio now present their fourth CD with works by Johannes Brahms! And once more, as with Volume III, Gerrit Zitterbart, Ulrich Beetz and Birgit Erichson played historical instruments and used. Gut strings. Martin Spangenberg played a copy of a clarinet by Richard Muhlfeld, who inspired Brahms' later clarinet works. - the recording was made in a small church near Vienna. The Abegg Trio never fail to astound US with their timelessly modern, unsentimental, accurate, thorough and yet truly sensitive interpretation of the score.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Brahms: The Piano Miniatures (Streicher Fortepiano)

Classical Music

Classical Music

If you're interested in Furtw�ngler's views on the German Requiem, this is the performance to hear. Furtw�ngler led a reading of unusual intensity on this date. It's not that he emphasizes the music's contrasts, although these are given their due. It's more a matter of how he makes the music flow from one measure, phrase, section, and movement to the next; this is a German Requiem as a broad, inexorable river taking the listener to the peace of the afterlife.

Classical Music

Classical Music

Twice Brahms worked on his first piano trio [op. 8]: In 1854, when he put it to paper and 1889, when he worked on it again and thoroughly revised it. Both versions have their merit and, more importantly still, their own specific musical charm. This applies particularly to the finely chiselled interpretations by the Abegg Trio. Fono Forum)

Recorded ‘as live’ in October 2006 following its performance at The Sixteen’s opening concert as Associate Artists of Southbank Centre, Brahms’ German Requiem one of the great choral masterpieces of all time. Brahms himself made a piano transcription of the orchestral parts of his magnificent Requiem. The arrangement for two players allows a degree of intimacy, precision and contrapuntal clarity that cannot be achieved in the orchestral version; indeed, at times one is reminded of the Liebeslieder-Walzer op. 52. In 1871 this version was given its English première conducted by Brahms’s friend Julius Stockhausen.  It is appropriate therefore that the piano used on this recording is a Bösendorfer of 1872 thus allowing us to experience the sort of sound Brahms himself would have heard.

Classical Music