Classical Music

Brahms’s first connection with choral music came in 1857, and his first appointment in Vienna, in 1863, was to conduct the Singakademie. He premièred A German Requiem in the city and wrote widely for choral forces, taking a variety of poetic source material. Begräbnisgesang (Funeral Hymn) evinces a great feeling of solemnity, whilst Schicksalslied (Song of Destiny) is an urgent, volatile work. Nänie was written as a lament for the death of the painter Anselm Feuerbach, and the Alto Rhapsody has remained one of the greatest works for contralto in the repertoire.

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This disc was originally available as Conifer CDCF 178.

As featured at the 2013 London Proms on August 17th, Marin Alsop conducts Brahms's a German Requiem, which is almost certainly triggered by the death of his mother in 1865. It is of his greatest and most popular works, quite unlike any previous Requiem. With texts taken from Luther's translation of the Bible and an emphasis on comforting the living for their loss and on hope of the Resurrection, the work is deeply rooted in the tradition of Bach and Schuutz, but is vastly different in character from the Latin Requiem of Catholic tradition with it's evocation of the Day of Judgement and prayers for mercy on the souls of the dead.

Brahms wrote his String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 67 in 1876 and its alrgely unclouded and cheerful qualities culminate in a theme and variations finale of exceptional imagination and mastery of form. His last chamber music was inspired by a great exponent of the clarinet, Richard Mühlfeld, for whom he wrote four works including the Clarinet Quintet. This dazzling masterpiece is notable not only for its underlying elegiac mood but for its thematic interrelation and teh wide expressive range of the solo instrument. The first two String Quartets can be heard on 8573433 in performances described by ClassicsToday as "... passionate expressions of these scores."

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REVIEWS:

There can be no gainsaying that this is a gorgeous performance of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet; and the New Zealand String Quartet’s performance of Brahms’s String Quartet No. 3 is no less compelling.

– Fanfare

Brahms String Quartet Op. 67 is an extraordinary piece and the NZSQ gives it a truly fine performance. An equally magnificent performance of one of Brahms’s late masterpieces, the Clarinet Quintet, Op. 115, finds the James Campbell's gorgeous clarinet in perfect balance and in equal partnership with the strings, which is as it should be.

– Musical Toronto

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.

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Eugene Asti writes of this new release: "When I was trying to decide which solo pieces to record, I felt drawn to the late piano works as they seemed in some way related to his songs. Brahms's Lieder are some of his most intimate and personal compositions, and although small in scale, there is a wealth of emotional depth and poetic sensibility to be explored in them. The exact same thing can be said of the late piano works, which are likewise small in dimension and certainly not composed as virtuosic showpieces. They are also among the most beautiful and profound of all his works, possessing a truly vocal quality with which, as a song pianist, I can immediately identify (some could almost be called 'songs without words'). In the making of this recording, I was very fortunate that LAWO chose a wonderful reconditioned Steinway D dating from 1893, which is just a year after the composition of these late piano pieces." Eugene Asti is one of the foremost accompanists of his generation, and regularly tours and records as a solo musician. His many recordings have garnered him widespread critical acclaim.

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Founded in 2009, Trio Shaham Erez Wallfisch is made up of three of the best classical musicians performing today: violinist Hagai Shaham, pianist Arnon Erez, and cellist Raphael Wallfisch. Alongside the trio, performs the Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie, conducted by Daniel Raiskin. For this two disc release, the works of Brahms have been chosen.

Mravinsky, Vol. 1: The Brahms Symphonies

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Seen as the successor to Beethoven by many of his contemporaries, Johannes Brahms combined traditional form with an originality o fmusical language that has inspired generations of composers. His two string quintets are, like Mozart's, scored with two violas for richness of texture and harmonic depth. The positive mood of the First String Quintet reflects the sunny resort of Bad Ischl where Brahms composed during the spring of 1882, while his Second String Quintet combines symphonic breadth with nostalgic melancholy in what was originally intended to be his final chamber work. Formed in 1987, the New Zealand String Quartet has established a distinguished international reputation over the past three decades. The ensemble's discography includes all the quartets by Mendelssohn, Bartok and Berg, and this recording completes their three albums of Brahms chamber music for Naxos.

Although Brahms arranged many of his own works for piano, either played through to friends or published in this form for a wider public, he also turned his attention to the music of other composers.

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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)

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This is a new installment of SWR CLASSIC-series dedicated to Hans Rosbaud. It contains all the recordings the Austrian conductor made for the SWR, some of them being for the first time released on modern recording technology. The recordings were made shortly (days!) before his death. Both Piano Concertos are interpreted by famous pianists of the 20th century: Walter Gieseking and Géza Anda, Gramophone recently remarked that Rosbaud "was one of the unsung heroes of mid-20th-century music, who ... gave thoroughly rehearsed and assimilated performances and premieres of the widest possible range of music". In Fanfare, Peter J. Rabinowitz pointed to range of his sympathies, claiming it was "greater than that of just about any of his contemporaries except perhaps Bernstein, Scherchen, and Stokowski. Rosbaud is best remembered, probably, for his Mahler, his Bruckner, his work with the Second Vienna School ... and especially his commitment to the post-war avant-garde…”

The first Brahms concerto is a touchstone for each and every pianist. Until now nobody had dared to record the concerto on a historical grand piano with an orchestra performing on historical instruments. On his solo recordings Hardy Rittner has already conquered the Brahms Olympus on various occasions. He is joined by the brilliantly arrayed l'arte del mondo orchestra under the conductor Werner Ehrhardt. The result: a great risk - in a live performance - has become a great recording.

An invigorating and very enjoyable reading of this fine symphony.

This is the second instalment in Marin Alsop’s ongoing Brahms cycle. Both its predecessor and this latest offering have been widely praised by colleagues. I’ve heard her both on radio and on disc in twentieth century repertoire but I’d yet to encounter her in "standard" repertoire so I was curious to hear her in Brahms and especially in what has long been my favourite of the four symphonies.

She immediately scores high marks with me for taking the exposition repeat in the first movement. This is not so often done. I can understand why conductors omit the repeat for there is an issue of structural balance. Taking the repeat elongates the first movement by some five minutes - in this performance - and thereby means that, in Ms Alsop’s hands, the first movement accounts for 20:05 of the 44:51 that she takes for the whole symphony. So there is a danger of imbalance but I must say I didn’t feel that this particular reading was unbalanced and, in any case, why wouldn’t one wish to hear such wonderful music twice? Also, omitting the repeat means that the first time bars must be left out and that’s a pity since the music they contain is well worth hearing, as Ms Alsop demonstrates.

In his good liner-note Robert Pascall rightly draws attention to the dark side of this movement. The Second is conventionally regarded as Brahms’s sunniest symphony and many conductors focus on that side rather than the darker element, which is mainly to be found in the development section. Marin Alsop, it seems to me, is one such and I don’t find that her interpretation brings out the dark side of the music. That’s not to disparage her reading in any way. A "sunny" approach is perfectly valid and, in any case, even if you appreciate a performance that hints at deeper waters, as I do, you may not want to hear such a reading every day. A couple of years ago, for example, I reviewed what I thought was an exceptionally unsettling account of this movement by Furtwängler. Tremendously impressive though that was, it wouldn’t do for everyday listening. No, it seems to me that Marin Alsop gives us a well-imagined and highly enjoyable rendition of this movement, one which is built on rhythmic vitality, warm phrasing and excellent attention to dynamics.

Ms. Alsop judges the start of the second movement beautifully, encouraging the celli to sing out. Later there’s excellent work by the LPO’s principal horn and, indeed, this is matched by the other wind soloists. Ms. Alsop clearly loves this music and under her guidance the strings phrase generously. She pays great attention to sustaining the musical line and this I like very much. In the central section of the movement there’s just the right amount of powerful projection before the return of the warm lyricism that characterised the opening paragraphs.

There’s some nice, pert wind playing at the start of the Allegretto and later the strings match their wind colleagues in agility. This movement is a fairly brief interlude in the overall scheme of things, a bit of a musical sorbet in fact. Here it receives a fresh and engaging reading.

Ms. Alsop catches well the mood of suppressed energy at the start of the finale. Once Brahms increases the volume she presses the music home splendidly, striking a balance between energy and lyricism that seems to me to be extremely well judged. The end of this ebullient movement is irresistibly jubilant here with the LPO brass, who have served their conductor well throughout the whole performance, well to the fore.

In summary, this is an invigorating and very enjoyable reading of this fine symphony. The LPO plays attentively and with commitment. On the evidence of this release, this Brahms cycle is not one that’s being made just for the sake of it but rather because Marin Alsop wanted to do it and has something definite to say about the music.

As a filler we’re offered eight of the Hungarian Dances, three of them in orchestrations by Brahms, the remainder in orchestral dress tailored for them by Dvo?ák. I have to confess that these pieces aren’t really my cup of tea but they are well done. In common with a lot of so-called light music these dances aren’t easy to do well. On this occasion the performances benefit from enthusiastic playing. Equally important is the fact that the dances are shaped affectionately by Marin Alsop, who displays a good, intuitive sense of rubato.

A most enjoyable disc which can be recommended confidently and enthusiastically.

-- John Quinn, MusicWeb International

Okay, we all know that at this point no one needs a new Brahms cycle, but this first installment has one thing going for it: Marin Alsop appears to be a fine Brahms conductor. She begins the First Symphony with an introduction that would have made Klemperer sit up and take notice: it's that grand and imposing. Happily, she also launches the allegro (exposition repeat retained) with genuine thrust and energy, while her generous rubato as she relaxes into the second subject is effortlessly managed--and she builds to the recapitulation with plenty of excitement and rhythmic tension. This is the genuine article, make no mistake. The slow movement reveals the same beautifully controlled transitions, the tempo nicely flowing, marred only by an insensitive solo violin, too closely miked.


The third movement reveals one other small flaw in the performance: rather faceless wind playing from clarinets and oboes (to some degree a function of the forward string balances and generous reverberation that otherwise serves the music to impressive effect). Alsop builds the brooding introduction to the finale with an unerring feel for the music's atmosphere, though I wish she had launched the movement proper with a swifter account of the "big tune". To her credit, though, she doesn't lurch forward at the forte counterstatement, but rather accumulates energy naturally. The coda goes really well, with an impressive feeling of culmination, and Alsop takes care to make the trombones audible in the final bars, a nice touch that sets the seal on a very distinguished effort.


The two overtures are no less impressive. Of course, the Academic Festival is practically unkillable, but Alsop's pointed rhythms help project the music's joyous humor while preventing the familiar tunes from sounding foursquare. Her Tragic Overture is one of the best, at a tempo remarkably close to Ancerl's benchmark interpretation--which is to say slowish and implacably serious. At this speed, the rich harmonies of the second subject and throughout the development really tell, and the climaxes have time to register with the necessary impact. I look forward very much to the next installments in this series.


As I said, the market doesn't really need this, but Naxos is right to let Alsop shine in the music she identifies with most strongly, and her Brahms certainly qualifies. Besides, wonderful though it is to conduct lots of Barber, Reich, and Glass, the fact remains that careers are made in the standard repertoire, where comparisons with illustrious interpretations past and present are made. Certainly on evidence here Alsop has nothing to fear from the competition. If the rest of this cycle remains at this high level (that is, if she pegs the finale of the Second Symphony and becomes one of the very few conductors to play the Third really well), then I would say her reputation will be secure for some time to come.
--David Hurwitz, ClassicsToday.com

After the first album with French cello music and the very successful recording of the Haydn Cello Concertos, Harriet Krijgh continues with the pearls of German-romantic cello literature: the recording of Brahms’ cello sonatas.

What a debut! The Scherzo in E flat minor is the first exsisiting composition by Johannes Brahms, and its gloom and bizarre character go beyond even the no-joking-matter models set by Chopin.

Hardy Rittner has recorded this rarity on the fourth installment of his historical Brahms series – for the first time on a 240-centimeter Ignaz Bösendorfer grand piano from 1846. The biting tone of this instrument immediately gets under the skin and forms an exciting contrast to the two J. B. Streicher grand pianos.

The two Rhapsodies op. 79 get things going. Brahms would not have been Brahms if he had not composed these pieces with a compelling formal logic. The second rhapsody bears the heading “Molto passionato,” and Hardy Rittner conjures magnificent passion out of the Streicher grand piano from 1868.

In the Piano Pieces op. 76 he spreads out a multicolored kaleidoscope ranging from melancholy to graceful charm and from dancy mirth to eerie gloom - it all is there and can be experienced with special immediacy on this historical instrument.

Brahms composed sixteen waltzes as his ticket to Viennese musical society and dedicated them to the feared critic Eduard Hanslick. This tactic paid off. Hanslick became Brahms’s most glowing admirer.

Rittner shows why this was so: simple on the surface, these exquisitely crafted waltzes create their own special cosmos of expressive colors with a wonderfully catchy tune, a racy Hungarian piece, and other masterful intricacies in three-four time.

This is a hybrid Super Audio CD playable on both regular and Super Audio CD players.

BRAHMS Viola Sonatas: op. 78 (trans. Csaba Erdélyi); op. 120/1; op. 120/2 • Roberto Diaz (va); Jeremy Denk (pn) • NAXOS 8.570827 (70:55)


To twist an old saw two ways: Familiarity breeds contempt of the unfamiliar; familiarity breeds comfort. The familiar G-Major piano and violin sonata was transcribed by contemporary violist Csaba Erdélyi for piano and viola, and was transposed to D in keeping with Brahms’s transposition to D for his piano and cello version of this sonata. Erdélyi reasoned that if it works for violin and for cello, then why not in between—for viola. To my ears, this music thus altered by Erdélyi flattens its appeal, ironically by adding a sharp. The problem is the lowered-by-a-fourth pitch, which relegates too much of the piano sound to the “bass-ment,” especially in the Adagio. The viola sonorities are also dulled. The conclusion of the Adagio suffers most where the beauty of the rising and falling piano figure is sharply diminished by the key shift down to B? from the original E?. Here, Erdélyi sharpens the pain, fittingly by deleting a flat. I have not heard Brahms’s cello version, and I might not like that either. ArkivMusic does not list Brahms’s cello transcription separately, but I did find a few cellists listed who have recorded it.


The clarinet is the focal instrument in Brahms’s last four chamber works: the A-Minor Trio (op. 114), the B-Minor Quintet (op. 115), and the two op. 120 sonatas. Clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld was the dedicatee of these four pieces. Brahms recognized that the viola could substitute for the clarinet in the two sonatas, therefore he published the sonatas for clarinet or viola. The clarinet version seems to have been rooted in tradition, but the viola version has recently taken a firm hold, especially with the growth of recorded music. Currently, ArkivMusic lists about 60 clarinet versions and close to 40 viola versions.


Now I confess my secret conversion. After growing up with the clarinet versions and, without ever listening, disdaining the viola versions, when I first heard the viola versions a few years ago, I became a convert (my “con-version”). The viola sound in these sonatas is much more satisfying to me than that of the clarinet, although I love both versions. With that prejudice on the table (or on the page, or on the screen), the opus 120 performances by these two artists are excellent in every respect. As to phrasing, dynamics, tone coloring, tempos—whatever qualities I can muster—these are performances that belong in everyone’s collection.


Jeremy Denk is a pianist of growing reputation, having appeared as soloist with several major orchestras throughout the world. Roberto Diaz is a noted violist. Formerly principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he is now president and CEO of the Curtis Institute of Music. Their contribution to the Brahms opus 120 sonatas is most welcome.


FANFARE: Burton Rothleder