Classical Music

Although the symphony was the most prestigious instrumental genre of his time, Brahms avoided it for many years. In 1872, when he was already more than forty years old and was widely acknowledged for his chamber and choral music, he observed: ‘I will never write a symphony! You can’t imagine what it’s like to hear a giant treading behind you.’ The giant was of course Beethoven, at once an inspiration and a source of intimidation for composers of Brahms’s generation. Fortunately, however, he went back on his promise a few years later with his First Symphony, followed by three more composed between 1876 and 1885. The two works presented here are the Second Symphony, sometimes sombre, sometimes radiant, and the Fourth, a genuine masterpiece of the genre. This disc, recorded on period instruments under the masterly direction of Philippe Herreweghe, is released to coincide with a double anniversary: as a prelude to the Flemish conductor’s seventieth birthday, it also celebrates the twenty-fifth year of existence of one of his favourite ensembles: the Orchestre des Champs-Élysées.

BRAHMS: SERENADE NO 2, ETC TI

The only winner to take home both the First Prize and two special jury prizes at the Rostropovich Competition, Marie-Elisabeth Hecker is one of an elite number of cellists who are truly making their mark on the world of classical music.; This is her very first sonata recording, and she is joined by pianist Martin Helmchen for these performances of Brahms’ sonatas.; With playing which has been described as “moving and instinctively beautiful” (Die Zeit) Marie-Elisabeth provides a charming programme in this recording.

American pianist Timothy Ehlen continues his prolific recording career with this offering of the music of Johannes Brahms. Mr. Ehlen, Professor of Piano at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, has performed extensively in the United States and Europe as a soloist and chamber player. He first gained international attention after winning the World Piano Competition in 1987; after his subsequent debut in Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall in 1988, the New York Times raved that his "playing was filled with elegant personality... recalled bygone artists like Robert Casadesus and, especially Walter Gieseking in their mastery of both 18th century and impressionist music... immaculate technique." The Pro Piano Recital Series sponsored his 1997 recital in Weill Hall at Carnegie Hall, which the New York Concert Review hailed as "... an absolutely remarkable tour-de-force." Recitals in France, Germany and Korea have received a similarly enthusiastic response. Mr. Ehlen has recorded the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas for the Azica label. After the release of volume III, Fanfare Magazine wrote: "... I have the feeling that the cycle with the richest rewards will turn out to be the Ehlen."

Brilliant Classics proudly present 5 new albums in this series: QUINTESSENCE, attractively priced compact box sets containing essential core classical repertoire in outstanding performances. Aimed at attracting both the discerning classical connoisseur and the classical newcomer it presents the pillars of classical music: Brahm’s Complete Symphonies & Concertos, Beethoven’s Complete Piano Trios, Mozart’s Music for Violin, Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, Orchestral Suites & Violin Concertos and Schubert’s Piano Trios, String Quintets and String Quartets. World class performers include Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra with Jaap van Zweden, Hungarian Chamber Orchestra with Kristóf Baráti and conductor Heinz Bongartz as well as the Berliner Sinfonie-Ochester with Günter Herbig.

When Sony Classicals new complete Brahms cycle with Zubin Mehta conducting the Israel Philharmonic was first released, the Baltimore Sun reviewer referred to a marriage of passion performances fine enough to recommend to any listener who wants his Brahms in a single collection. The Symphony No. 1 receives a heroic, turbulent performance in which Mehta and the fine orchestra of which he was long ago appointed music-director-for-life keep raising the thermostat until in the final movement they all but blow the roof off. The Symphony No. 2, which receives a similarly passionate performance, may be even better. Nos. 3 and 4, the reviewer goes on to say, are also beautiful. This major new reissue also contains the Haydn Variations and Tragic Overture.

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

Classical Music

Johannes Brahms (1833-1896) absorbed and integrated the musical legacy of his time, as did J.S. Bach before him. The music of Brahms is intimately connected to and rooted in the German-Austrian tradition that he inherited. For Brahms, this tradition was very much alive and relevant; he constantly measured his own efforts against the achievements of Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, trying to live up to and continue their legacy. He was not looking back to the past, but "progressing" (to use the terminology of Schoenberg's essay "Brahms the Progressive") towards a past that was yet to be fulfilled. There is a precious sense of inevitability in great art, as if every masterpiece was meant to be created exactly as it is. The works of Brahms are amazingly organic, meticulously calculated and very human at the same time. This fusion of intellect and feeling, sincerity and reserve, heartfelt emotion and impeccable taste is unique to Brahms. It makes his music inevitable and indispensable. Pianist and conductor Vladimir Feltsman is one of the most versatile and constantly interesting musicians of our time. His vast repertoire encompasses music from the Baroque to 20th century composers. A regular guest soloist with leading symphony orchestras in the United States and abroad, he appears in the most prestigious concert series and music festivals all over the world.

This album is the third in a series of recordings of the solo piano works of Brahms by pianist Jonathan Plowright. His two previous discs in this series gained critical acclaim, including Instrumental Choice of the Month in BBC Music Magazine. This recording includes the deeply emotional Piano Pieces Op. 76 and Op. 118, 16 Waltzes Op. 39, and the extravagant Variations on a Hungarian Melody. Variations on a Hungarian Melody is one of Brahms’ most intriguing and famous works. The piece is inspired by the composer’s captivation with Hungarian gypsy music, as well as his friendship with Eduard Remenyi, a popular violinist of Brahms’ day.

Review:

Plowright’s complete Brahms piano music for BIS has now reached Vol 3, with all its intelligence, subtlety and power in full blossom. These sound totally fresh, as though a fully formed, cultured musician, unencumbered by conventional approaches or received wisdom, took up these scores for the first time in maturity. The results are often unexpected, yet always apt and never less than convincing. I have a feeling this is going to be the benchmark Brahms survey for some time to come.

– Gramophone

This Brahms album with the internationally acclaimed duo Tasmin Little and Piers Lane will stand as a landmark in their already highly praised discography of romantic chamber music repertoire. Standing amongst the summits of the genre, the three violin sonatas by Brahms, his only ever published ones, are a pure demonstration of radiant effusiveness and romanticism in that they call for great virtuosity as well as empathy from both instruments equally. Although written twenty-five years later, they have their origin in 1853 when Brahms made the acquaintance of the Schumanns and, above all, of the great violinist Joseph Joachim, who would remain one of his closest and most musically influential friends. From the profoundly lyrical Op. 78 and Op. 100 to the more pianistic Op. 108, this recording reveals Brahms at his most intense, poetic, and melodic. Faultless support is delivered by a duo that has now established itself as a major force in romantic repertoire.

COPLAND; BRAHMS; FROST; LUTOSLAWSKI; PIAZZOLLA; HILLBORG; HOGBERG AUSTRALIAN CHAMBER ORCHESTRA; FROST (CLAR.); TOGNETTI (DIR.) DANCES TO A BLACK PIPE- CONCERTO FOR CLARINET AND STRING ORCHESTRA WITH HARP AND PIANO; HUNGARIAN DANCES NOS 1, 12, 13 & 21; KLEZMER DANCES FOR CLARINET AND STRINGS; DANCE PRELUDES (2ND VERSION); OBLIVION FOR CLARINET, SOLO VIOLIN AND STRINGS; ETC.

A weighty symphony, swaying Viennese waltzes and fiery Hungarian dances make up the colourful programme when Thomas Dausgaard and his Swedish Chamber Orchestra engage with Johannes Brahms in Opening Doors, the team's acclaimed series of Romantic orchestral composers. Johannes Brahms was only twenty years old when Robert Schumann hailed him as one whose genius gave rise to the greatest symphonic hopes. It is therefore striking that he didn't complete his First Symphony until more than twenty years later, in 1876 - even though the earliest sketches for it date back to 1855. Brahms - who once said that he constantly heard the 'giant' Beethoven 'marching behind him' - had such a deep respect for what his great predecessor had achieved with the genre that he for a long time doubted that he would ever be able to write a symphony of his own - by the time he did, it must have been gratifying to him that it was hailed as 'Beethoven's Tenth'. While working on the symphony, Brahms composed his Op.52, the cycle Liebeslieder-Walzer 'for piano four-hands (and song ad libitum)'. He kept the forces as flexible as possible: the waltzes were performable with or without voices; if used, the vocal parts could be sung either by soloists or by a choir. Even so, he was soon asked for another version, for choir and orchestra. Brahms initially rejected this idea, but finally agreed to make a partial orchestration: selecting eight of the Op.52 waltzes, he supplemented them with an early version of one of the not yet published Neue Liebeslieder-Walzer, Op.65. Around the same time, he was asked to orchestrate another collection of dances composed for piano four-hands: his first set of Hungarian Dances, which had quickly become a great hit. It took him four years to comply with this wish, and even then he only accepted to orchestrate three of the dances, leaving the field open for various other arrangers (including Dvorák) to satisfy the demand for more.

The present recording of the Fourth Symphony of Johannes Brahms is the last one produced by OehmsClassics with Stanislaw Skrowaczewski. Thus many cycles lie dormant on CD and no more will follow. Nonetheless, a special birthday present for the phenomenal maestro is being prepared.

Classical Music

This new release from pianist Barry Douglas is the sixth and final volume in his exploration of Brahms’s output for solo piano. BBC Music writes of this series, “Douglas’s tone is a deep velvet cushion, the legatos full of affection and the rhythms galvanized with great energy.” This unique collection of works shows Brahms not only as a composer, but also an arranger, pedagogue, historian, virtuoso, and pianist. Barry Douglas hails from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has won numerous awards all over the globe, including an appointment as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire and the gold medal in the International Tchaikovsky Competition.

REVIEW:

Douglas’s hefty, full-bodied sound, built from the bottom up, befits the mellow power of Brahms’s sound world. In the dark E flat minor Op 118 Intermezzo, most pianists focus attention on the right-hand melody and treat the rumbling left-hand lines as muted filigree. Douglas, however, does almost the exact opposite, and the effect is revelatory.

– Gramophone

Classical Music

On November 8, 2019, at Carnegie Hall, New York, during a tour with the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and only a few weeks before his unexpected death, Mariss Jansons conducted his final concert. On the programme was Johannes Brahms’ Fourth Symphony and the latter’s famous Hungarian Dance No. 5 was played as an encore. The live recording in Carnegie Hall, released here for the first time on Vinyl by BR-KLASSIK, is the great conductor’s musical legacy. For the last seventeen years of his life – from 2003 to 2019 – Mariss Jansons was chief conductor of the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks and the Bavarian Radio Chorus. Both ensembles and their conductor appreciated each other deeply on an artistic as well as a human level, and this resulted in numerous unforgettable concerts. Jansons’ unrelenting demands on himself and his musicians, his always respectful treatment of his colleagues, and his great devotion to music all played a lead role in their work together. Mariss Jansons occupies a place of honor in the orchestra’s history, and its players will always revere and cherish his memory. With the death of Mariss Jansons one year ago, the music world lost one of its greatest artistic personalities.

Kenneth Woods writes of this release: “The idea for this orchestration of the Brahms Piano Quartet in A Major came to me spontaneously in a flash of inspiration while I was coaching chamber music at the Ischia Chamber Music Festival in 2008. … I listened to a group play through the first movement of the piece in its original form. As I began to work with them, I found myself speaking to the pianist, as I often do, in orchestral terms. “Can you try playing the opening phrase more like…. a quartet of hunting horns?” I asked…After the coaching I had a bit of free time, and found myself listening to an imaginary orchestral version of the entire first movement emerging from that horn quartet. I was fascinated by the ways in which I thought an orchestral realization could bring to the fore some the nature imagery and vernacular music that is present in the original. By the end of that morning, I’d decided to try to undertake a realization of the orchestration. It took several years from that morning on Ishcia to complete this orchestration. After my initial work on it in 2008, the piece was set to one side while I attended to other projects with firmer deadlines. The final version was premiered on 21 November, 2017 with the English Symphony Orchestra in Cheltenham Town Hall. The scores of Brahms’ Four Symphonies are like a sacred text for me. They are among the most studied, most loved, most performed works in my library. In trying to understand his use of the orchestra well enough to translate this Piano Quartet into a symphonic sound world, I’ve found my admiration for Brahms’ achievement continuing to grow.”

This release presents a musical portrait of Johannes Brahms in piano works from his early and later years. The Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor Op. 5 is a masterpiece. Here Brahms is at his most passionate, impulsive and grandiose, a young hero about to conquer the world. Skipping several decades we enter the world of late Brahms, here the passion is tinged with a sweet melancholy, reflective and resigned. Brahms called his later Klavierstücke “Wiegenlieder meiner Schmerz” (Lullabies of my sorrow). Young Russian pianist Philipp Kopachevsky’s musical intuition is the key to enter the musical world of Brahms, his quasi improvisatory playing makes the music come to life under his hands. His sound, from a thundering heroism to a murmuring chiaroscuro, touches the listener’s soul directly. Philipp Kopachevsky is one of the most remarkable pianists of the younger generation. Winner of several international competitions he is in much demand as a soloist, having played with conductors like Rostropovich, Gergiev, Spivakov, Pletnev and many others. This is Philipp Kopachevsky’s third album for Piano Classics. His first CD received rave reviews: “..a rare discovery…extraordinary talent…a great musician..” (Piano World) “..technical mastery and deeply searching musicality…a must…6 Stars..” (Piano News Germany) “…Kopachevsky’s hands communicate real musical thought, he adds a touch of intensity to every bar..personal and intriguing…” (Fanfare)

Van Cliburn's youthful impetuosity is most convincing. This is very much a performance that takes one along with it, just as a fine performance live in the concert hall would.

It is some eighteen months since Van Cliburn's surprisingly successful account of the Brahms Second Concerto appeared, and on the face of it this vast youthful inspiration of the First Concerto should suit Van Cliburn's special qualities even more closely. And so it proves, and though Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony do not prove such perceptive collaborators as the lamented Reiner with his Chicago Orchestra, this is in terms of pianistic display and dynamic driving force as exciting a performance as we have ever had on record. The way for example that Van Cliburn in the finale sweeps the music on from the first subject into the second is irresistible. Those pianists who insist on relaxing may seem a little lacking in excitement in direct comparison—even to Clifford Curzon. Where they score—and Curzon of course is the prime example of a thinking virtuoso in this work—is in the subtlety of shading. You could not claim for Van Cliburn much sense of 'inner' thoughtfulness. But that does not mean he is hard, and throughout the warmth of the playing is as striking as the dynamic drive. It is a pity perhaps that in the American manner the soloist is put so close to the microphone, for it is hard for him to achieve a real pianissimo, however gently he plays. But RCA's technique of spotlighting individual instruments (not merely the piano) pays off very well at the climax of the slow movement—a moment that for me at least is perhaps the most important single passage in the whole work. If in the great call of the rising fourths slowly enunciated over piano arpeggios you have a sense of culmination and achievement such as opera composers provide at moments of dramatic catharsis, then I am disposed to think favourably of the whole performance. It is so with the Gimpel performance on HMV Concert Classics where Kempe is marvellous, and here Leinsdorf (with the help of the spotlighting engineers) directs with more warmth than I remember from him for a long time.

In the first movement of course, Curzon's subtlety coupled with his wiry strength is a hard combination to compete with, but Van Cliburn's youthful impetuosity is most convincing. The speed is not fast (much less fast than in the Fleisher/Szell performance for example) and Leinsdorf, though not specially good on detail, gives the music a tremendous sweep which exactly matches the soloist's sense of command.

I hope I have made it clear that this is very much, a performance that 'adds up'. In other words it takes one along with it, just as a fine performance live in the concert hall, and on that account I have been wary of drawing too sharp a contrast with Curzon on the basis of a side-by-side comparison of extracts. Curzon, I think, would be most people's choice, but if I wanted bravura above all, then Van Cliburn even more than his fellow young American, Leon Fleisher, provides it. Apart from the balance, the recording—I have so far heard mono only—is good, though it never achieves the atmospheric clarity that the Decca engineers provided for Curzon.

-- Gramophone [3/1965]
reviewing the original LP release of the concerto

Following two releases featuring Schubert, Shostakovich, and Beethoven, the Aris Quartet, one of the leading award-winning chamber music ensembles of recent years, has put Johannes Brahms on the program of its third GENUIN album. Included are two key works of the chamber music literature of the 19th century: The String Quartet in C minor, dating from the early period of maturity, is characterized by how the composer dealt with personal losses and how he overcame great doubts. The Clarinet Quintet is one of Brahms' last works ever. A swan song to his oeuvre, perhaps even to Romanticism in general. Enchantingly beautiful playing by a magnificent ensemble!

I was truly relieved to learn that you seem to be not entirely unsatisfied with my arrangement of your sextets. Indeed I put much work into them, but it is always a delicate matter when one senses the author's fine nose lurking in the background. You went through the proofs meticulously, as it seems, and it will thus be hard for me to find further printing errors. There are quite a few in the score (of the sextets)! Ah, well, even fools should find some enjoyment when they deal with them one hundred years from now. In my opinion, trio players will regard these two works as a welcome gift. That last 'prophetic' sentence by Theodor Kirchner - in an 1883 letter thanking Brahms for having praised his arrangements of his sextets - was unfortunately not fulfilled: these trio arrangements of all kinds: according ot general opinion, they are at odds with the current demand for 'historical authenticity'. Anyone who sets out to arrange a musical masterpiece is undoubtedly assuming an immense artistic responsibility. In the best of cases, an arrangement should not only permit other instruments to perform the original in a new setting, but it should illuminate certain aspects in a way the original could not. A truly well-achieved arrangement is thus also an act of interpretation that transforms its model to a certain extent. We, the two string players in the Jean Paul Trio, obviously knew an dloved Brahms's two string sextets from practical experience, having performed them frequently in their original scoring - how much greater was our surprise and fascination when all three of us discovered Theodor Kirchner's arrangements for piano trio! Not mere adaptations for a Hausmusik setting, they represent so much more: in our opinion, these are thoroughly ingenious elucidations of Brahms's string sextets..."

BRAHMS: Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4

Who actually wrote Johannes Brahms’ Hungarian Dances? Brahms probably heard most of these tunes as a child growing up in Hamburg, played by the Gypsy orchestras that were famous for their “Hungarian” dance tunes. These passionate and high-spirited melodies fascinate with their abrupt changes of mood, fanciful reveries and extravagant embellishments. Brahms may even have written a few of the melodies himself! But his hand is evident in the lush harmonies and emotional depth. This version for violin and piano was arranged by Brahms’ friend Joseph Joachim, the greatest violinist of his generation. The dances are played brilliantly by violinist Sabrina-Vivian Hopcker, who captures flawlessly the wild exuberance and deep sorrow of these alluring tunes. Fabio Bidini is the ideal collaborator, and together they have produced an album of uncommon beauty and appeal.

Classical Music

It is important to Yunus Kaya to let his interpretation seem spontaneous, almost improvisational, with all the care of rehearsal. Ilona Eibenschütz, a student of Clara Schumann who met Brahms personally and visited him during his summer stay in Bad Ischl, was allowed to hear his Opera 118 and 119 by the composer himself. In her memoirs, she describes his piano playing as "very free-spirited - as if he were improvising - with heart and soul..." During the recording, Kaya wanted to make these two aspects palpable: the loneliness and introversion on the one hand, and the openness to the spontaneous in sound and tempo shaping on the other. No feeling, no pain can be felt and described in the same way every day. From this basic attitude, Yunus Kaya has sought the balance between fidelity to the musical text and artistic freedom of the performer.

The horn was one of the instruments that Johannes Brahms learned in his youth, from his father who played it professionally. His fondness and familiarity with the instrument is clear from the glorious solos that he provided it with in his symphonies, and he gave it pride of place in the Horn Trio that he wrote in memory of his mother Christiane. Even so, he never composed any other chamber work involving the horn – an oversight that horn players have regretted ever since. Following up on two highly acclaimed BIS albums, Alec Frank-Gemmill decided to rectify this, and enlisted the help of pianist Daniel Grimwood and violinist Benjamin Marquise Gilmore. It goes without saying that the resulting disc includes the Horn Trio – which Frank-Gemmill has chosen to perform on the instrument played by Aubrey Brain on his legendary 1933 recording of the work. But leading up to this are two works originally written for violin and cello respectively. The sometimes controversial subject of transcriptions is discussed by Frank-Gemmill in his liner notes where he also explains his selection of works. In the Scherzo that Brahms wrote as his contribution to the F-A-E Sonata (which also included movements by Schumann and Albert Dietrich), he finds that the very fabric of the piece is made up of horn calls, while the galloping 6/8 theme reminds him of the final movement of the horn trio. Wanting to also include a sonata, Frank-Gemmill settled on the E minor Cello Sonata, Op. 38 as the one best suited for the horn, and together with arranger Daniel Grimwood the decision was made to transpose the work a third up, into G minor. Through their efforts, we are able to present a Brahms recital that hornists – and the rest of us – could only dream of.

Classical Music