Symphony 2, Academic Festival

This disc received a 1997 Grammy nomination for "Best Chamber Music Performance".

After Robert Holl’s outstanding recent disc of Brahms Lieder, Marjana Lipovsek, a singer of no less searching musical sense and sensibility, adds her own selection to the catalogue. Her strong and spirited Eastern European mezzo-soprano brings an appropriate inwardness and intensity to four of the five Op. 105 songs. Purposeful phrasing runs gently through the senses in ‘Wie Melodien zieht es’, like the song’s eponymous melody, and penetrates the very heart of the soul’s winter in ‘Immer leiser’. All, though, is not angst. Lipovsek and her accompanist Charles Spencer are sensitive to the rapidly shifting moods within a group of songs, so that the numb darkness of Heine’s cool night of death is recreated as evocatively as the light-filled morning of his ‘Es schauen die Blumen’. Later, a steely vocal strength for ‘Von ewiger Liebe’ can dissolve to the lunar evanescence of ‘Die Mainacht’. Lipovsek’s thrilling grasp of the regional idiom of the final three folksongs is in glaring contrast to the infelicitous English (American) translations in the accompanying text: I doubt that Brahms’s poets would own up to an ‘incalibrate glow’, a ‘cute little child’ or, still worse, ‘a together time’.

-- Hilary Finch, BBC Music Magazine

Intense and enthusiastic musicality inform every performance in this engaging program of mostly unfamiliar music.

This is a wholly delightful record. The Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society sometimes invites distinguished singers to join the instrumentalists in an evening at Alice Tully Hall, and this disc is the result of one such concert with two of America's brightest singing talents. Intense and enthusiastic musicality inform everything they do here, and they show their catholicity of taste in a wide-ranging programme of mostly unfamiliar music. Indeed even the one really well-known piece, "Non so pia", is presented in the unusual guise of an arrangement by Mozart himself for piano and violin accompaniment. It serves as a welcome memento of Miss von Stade's youthful, palpitating Cherubino, seen and heard at both Glyndebourne and Salzburg in recent years. Throughout, her tone and approach remind me of the young Christa Ludwig, except that one would have been unlikely to hear the Austrian mezzo in the French item, Chausson's sensual Chanson perpetuelle, which von Stade sings with dark, smouldering tone so right for its fin de slick eroticism. Judith Blegen is no less engaging in her solo items. She darkens her usually bright soprano for "Ja, wir schwären", an aria with clarinet obbligato from Die Verschworenen, written in 1823, with a typically Schubertian sense of longing. The Saint-Saens item comes from one of his early operas. The vocal line is in an attractively sinuous vein with a violin solo, another example of the French composer's art prompting thoughts that he may be in for a much-needed revaluation.

The Schumann and Brahms duets in varying moods demonstrate the almost perfect blend of the two voices and also the thought that must have gone into their preparation so unanimous is the phrasing. Both ladies sing German, as they do French and Italian, with great fluency. The accompaniments, under the direction of the ubiquitous Charles Wadsworth, are all worthy of the singing, Gervase de Peyer's clarinet and Gerard Schwarz's trumpet being worthy of special mention. Joel de Maria is an anagram of Jaime Laredo, who is undoubtedly the violinist concerned here! The proof-reading and ordering of the texts is poor; otherwise I have nothing but praise for the accomplishments displayed in a more than adequate recording.

-- Gramophone [2/1976]

Muti's strong and expressive performances provide reason enough for recommending the disc to anyone who fancies the linking of early Brahms with mature Elgar.

If this is an unexpected coupling from an unexpected source, Riccardo Muti's strong and expressive performances provide reason enough for recommending the disc to anyone who fancies the linking of early Brahms with mature Elgar. It is surprising how many versions of the Brahms are listed in the catalogue and though Muti's reading is distinctive among them—bringing out the fun and beefy good humour over the six movements—I would hesitate to recommend it as a first choice, when the recording is rather muddy, with a weighty bass and undernourished high violins. Knowing the acoustic problems of the Teatro La Scala in Milan, where it was recorded, I attribute the thinness of the violin sound more to the recording than to the players themselves, who are drawn not just from the opera orchestra at La Scala, but from other Italian orchestras as well.

The dynamic range of the recording is rather limited too, with the weight of sound failing to expand as it should. That said, the rustic quality of many of Brahms's ideas is well caught, with some outstanding solo wind playing, and with Muti giving the central Adagio, much the longest movement, a tender, delicate expressiveness which such rivals as Abbado (DG, 5/87—nla) or Haitink do not quite match. Even so, if anyone is wanting the Serenade above all, I would certainly recommend in preference the Haitink/Concertgebouw version on mid-price Philips. In the Silver Line Classics series it couples this work most aptly with the Serenade No. 2, though at the expense of omitting the exposition repeat in the first movement. Haitink's analogue sound has far more weight and atmospheric sense of presence than Abbado's Berlin recording for DG or the previous Sony version from Michael Tilson Thomas and the LSO, let alone this new issue.

The Milan acoustic treats the Elgar more kindly, though the violins are still on the thin side, and there is nothing like the opulence that Giuseppe Sinopoli, for example, finds in his Philharmonia version for DG (10/90—nla). Yet, like Sinopoli, Muti has a natural feeling for Elgarian rubato, and he too takes an expansive view, though he is not so extremely slow in the lovely Canto popolare nocturne. The Scala viola principal plays the solo in that section very beautifully, with perfect intonation, but surprisingly for an Italian in Italian-inspired music he is emotionally reticent. And though Muti is warmly expressive throughout the overture, he fails to thrust the surging coda home as excitingly as he has done in the concerthall in Britain, and one gathers in Philadelphia too. Nonetheless, it is always good to find British works, particularly ones that might be counted unfashionable, taken up by non-British orchestras and conductors, and played with such understanding. For anyone attracted to this coupling the reservations I have made may well prove insignificant.

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [1/1995]

Hallé and Sir Mark Elder are reunited with Sunwook Kim in long awaited studio recordings of repertoire with which he won the Leeds Piano Competition. London-based Sunwook Kim came to international recognition when he won the prestigious Leeds International Piano Competition in 2006, aged just 18, becoming the competition's youngest winner for 40 years, as well as its first Asian winner. His performance of Brahms's Concerto No. 1 with Hallé and Sir Mark Elder in the competition's finals attracted unanimous praise from the press. Since then, he has established a reputation as one of the finest pianists of his generation, appearing as a concerto soloist with many of the world's leading orchestras and in major recital venues in London, across Europe and in Japan. Sunwook Kim has also enjoyed an ongoing relationship with the Hallé Orchestra and Sir Mark Elder, performing in a variety of repertoire across a number of seasons. Here they return to Brahms' two masterworks; pieces which were separated by two decades and which display very differing musical and emotional outlooks, from the more ardent First to the more rhapsodic Second. Elder and Kim perform the Second Concerto together at the Bridgewater Hall, Manchester in April 2017.

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Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 - Schumann: Introduction and Al

Recorded live in Tokyo on 20 May 2009 with the NHK Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tadaaki Otaka, this concert provides a new opportunity to take the full measure of the poetry deployed by Nelson Goerner. This poetic approach has come to be seen as the pianist’s trademark in his recordings of Chopin or Debussy. Yet his interpretation also shows unfailing virtuosity, with a precision and power that place him among the most eminent pianists of our time. This recording is one that Nelson Goerner was particularly keen to make, for he views Brahms’s Second Concerto as an immense masterpiece. Premiered in Budapest in 1881 with Brahms himself at the piano, the work enjoyed immediate success with critics and public alike. Now, more than 200 years later, the piece is receiving new life.

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REVIEW:

There is something particularly well-thought out about this performance that makes it compelling. Pianists and conductors can often take a very different view of this concerto with the result that the work can feel like two performances rather than a single performance. The intertwining of a narrative between the orchestra and the pianist – the essence of great chamber-music – is particularly strong here, but so, too, is the sense that both Otaka and Goerner are just letting Brahms’s score unfold. It often feels like an event, a rather special experience, but I suspect one that Nelson Goerner would probably play very differently under another conductor and orchestra.

– MusicWeb International

Canadian pianist Peter Longworth has established himself as one of the most sought after performers of his generation. Equally comfortable as soloist and chamber musician, he has performed in cities around the world, including New York, Chicago, London, Montreal and Vancouver. Through his work as a private teacher at the Glenn Gould School in Toronto, and as one of the key facilitators of the chamber music and collaborative programs, he has influenced many of the most gifted young musicians of the next generation.

This album contains the last three sets of piano pieces composed by Brahms. Eduardo Fernandez has the measure of these works.

The American pianist Tzimon Barto and the world famous conductor Christoph Eschenbach have had a very long and close friendship together. After their successful Capriccio recording of Tchaikovsky’s B flat Minor Concerto they follow up now with recordings of the Brahms Concertos, cornerpieces of the piano concerto literature and further examples of these two artist’s close working partnership. Mr. Barto and Mr. Eschenbach, iconoclasts both, offer a new focus on these masterpieces. Also to be heard are Mr. Barto’s interpretations of the 4 Ballades, op. 10.

Rising pianist Ekaterina Litvintseva writes of this release in which she performs Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor Op. 15: "From a technical and musical perspective, it is one of the hardest concertos ever written! What clearly distinguishes it from other concertos is it's symbiosis of orchestra and pianist. What I mean is that the orchestra and pianist are very closely interlinked so as to give the concerto a thoroughly symphonic complexion. It is known that Brahms originally conceived the work as a symphony. It stands to reason, therefore, that this work should sound symphonic. The task set before the pianist when tackling this work is a very tall order, namely the challenge of playing a 50-minute concerto and, throughout every minute, immersing oneself in the music without losing sight of the overall picture. A useful analogy might be to imagine a mountainous landscape and, whilst enjoying the harmony and unity of the mountains, also to observe their slightest elevations and hollows. I believe that nature abounds in this work, as if I were to breathe in the fresh mountain air, feel it's vigor and visualize scenic colors. I have put so much time and energy into this concerto. By giving so many concerts, I was able to thoroughly immerse myself in the music and experiment with it 13 times. So I think I'm justified in saying that it has become my concerto."

Classical Music

Total playing time: 65'27

BERNSTEIN FAVORITES- ORCHESTRA

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BRAHMS: PIANO CONCERTO NO 2, 5

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]

This recording is in the DVD Audio format and will only play on hardware specifically compatible with the DVD Audio format. Standard CD players will not play this CD.

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

V3: RUBINSTEIN COLLECTION

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.

Classical Music

BRAHMS: SYMPHONY NO 1, ETC MU

BRAHMS: STRING QUARTET NO 3, C

Lars Vogt continues his series of concerto recordings with the Royal Northern Sinfonia with this new recording of Johannes Brahms’ (1833–1897) First Piano Concerto together with Four Ballades (Op. 10) for solo piano. As in previous albums, Lars Vogt conducts from the keyboard.

The evolution of Brahms’ 1st Piano Concerto took several steps. Originally conceived to become a Sonata for Two Pianos through orchestration it was developed into a four-movement Symphony until reaching into its final form of a Piano Concerto in three movements. During the process, which lasted from 1854 to 1856, some movements were also discarded and replaced by new material. This music is packed with much drama. No wonder since these years were particularly tumultuous in Brahms’ personal life: it was during this period when his great mentor Robert Schumann was sent into an asylum and ultimately died. It was also time when Brahms formed a close, lifelong friendship to Clara Schumann. Some of these feelings might well be echoed in the peaceful 2nd movement, Adagio.

Brahms’ Four Ballades, Op. 10 are works written in 1854 by a young composer barely in his 20s, yet these pieces are technically mature and profound in such a manner that they could even be compared to his final piano opuses.

Lars Vogt was appointed the first ever “Pianist in Residence” by the Berlin Philharmonic in 2003/04 and enjoys a high profile as a soloist and chamber musician. His debut solo recording on Ondine with Bach’s Goldberg Variations (ODE 1273-2) was released in August 2015 and has been a major critical success. Lars Vogt started his tenure as Music Director of the Royal Northern Sinfonia in September 2015. Lars Vogt was nominated for Gramophone’s Artist of the Year award in 2017. His recordings of Beethoven’s Piano Concertos Nos. 2 & 4 (ODE 1311-2) together with the Royal Northern Sinfonia and an album of Dvorak’s Piano Trios (ODE 1316-2) received Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in May 2018 and in December 2018. His most recent album on Ondine featuring four Mozart’s Piano Sonatas (ODE 1318-2) was also chosen Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice in July 2019.

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REVIEW:

The music-making is nothing short of sensational. This is a bold Brahms D minor with immense character, audacious and courageous. It is also perhaps the most sensitive and subtle reading of the score in recent memory. A wealth of seldom-heard orchestral detail emerges, with exquisite wind-playing especially prominent. Nothing is extraneous; every gesture seems bent towards maximum expressivity.

– Gramophone

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.

Classical Music

"•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."