Georgian violinist Lisa Batiashvili (whose name appears in the graphics in Georgia's uniquely beautiful script) is a worthy avatar of the great Russian school. Perhaps the strand of that tradition she most recalls is the one flowing from Jascha Heifetz, with his steely tonal perfection, long lines, and grasp of overall structure. These qualities serve Batiashvili well in the Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, a work for which there is certainly no shortage of available recordings. Where Batiashvili has the advantage over her peers, however, is in her close relationship with the orchestra here; this is her first recording with the Staatskapelle Dresden orchestra, of which she is "Capell-Virtuosin." It shows in her close work with conductor Christian Thielemann at the joints of Brahms' vast first-movement canvas, perhaps the most perfect marriage of sheer virtuosity with profound structural thinking in the history of music. The points at which the movement's intermediate dotted-rhythm theme return and mark the movement's sectional organization are handled with special snap here. Batiashvili, playing a fearsome cadenza by Ferruccio Busoni in the first movement, is technically superb, but she doesn't let technique overwhelm enthusiasm. The other strong point of this performance is the rousing finale, which is not unprecedented but is definitely not common among younger players fearful of stepping out. Again, Batiashvili manages a variety of sharp but not harsh attack to match Thielemann's rhythmic drive. If there's a downside here, it's the conclusion of the album, a trio of Romances for violin and piano, Op. 22, by Clara Schumann. These are worthwhile and underplayed pieces, but an orchestral potboiler would have been better; the music lurches from orchestra to violin-and-piano texture, and the switch in sound environment from the Lukaskirche in Dresden to the Bavaria Musikstudios in Munich is jarring. It sounds as though one recording has been taken off and another one put on. The Brahms is so good that this is no more than a minor complaint, however. Highly recommended.© TiVo

Brahms's masterclass in symphonic variation. Herbert Blomstedt and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig close their acclaimed Pentatone Brahms cycle with the composer’s Third and Fourth Symphonies. Compared to the epic First and gloomily pastoral Second, Brahms’s Third Symphony is a glorious exploration of the chamber-musical possibilities of the symphony orchestra. While musical variation of elementary motifs already plays an important role in this work, Brahms shows his absolute mastery of that technique even more impressively in the Fourth. Blomstedt’s keen eye for analytical detail never goes at the cost of the music’s emotional resonance, and the Gewandhausorchester plays these symphonies glowingly, demonstrating their extraordinary ensemble sound. Blomstedt’s work as a conductor is inseparably linked to his religious and human ethos, and his interpretations combine great faithfulness to the score and analytical precision with a soulfulness that awakens the music to pulsating life. ©: Pentatone

This is the debut recording with the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester by conductor Michael Sanderling, who recently ascended to the orchestra's podium as of 2023 when the album appeared. A set of Brahms symphonies, a crowded marketplace slot in the extreme, might seem a bold move in these circumstances, but nobody can accuse Sanderling of merely retreading others' steps. His Brahms is broad, slow, and detailed, seemingly opening the works into an expanded view. One attraction here, and one that could well bring buyers to the set on its own, is the rare Arnold Schoenberg orchestration of Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, that concludes the album. Although all the melodic material in the work is Brahms', the work is quite characteristic of Schoenberg in its rich, brash orchestration. Schoenberg, in explaining why he made this version of a Brahms chamber work, said, "It is always very badly played, because the better the pianist, the louder he plays, and you hear nothing from the strings. I wanted once to hear everything, and this I achieved." That statement might serve as well as a general characterization of Sanderling's symphony treatments here. All of his tempos are well on the slow side. The Symphony No. 4 in E minor, Op. 98, clocks in at well over 46 minutes, perhaps six minutes slower than average for the work. The rest are similarly measured, with exposition repeats adding to the overall heft. Sanderling fills the spaces with orchestral detail. Sample the opening movement of the Symphony No. 1 in C minor, Op. 68, where the slow introduction is atomized into small gestures that do, in his reading, have their parts to play in the music that follows. However, the big tunes, in this symphony's finale and elsewhere, lose some of their impact; the long line is not quite long enough to sustain them. Sanderling is probably at his best in the Symphony No. 3 in F major, Op. 90, with its compact thematic blocks in which he finds unsuspected layers. This new Brahms, also benefiting from the spacious acoustic of the new Orchesterhaus Luzerner Sinfonieorchester, certainly commands attention.© James Manheim /TiVo

With the big yellow sticker above his piano, Grigory Sokolov’s last recital resembles Deutsche Grammophon’s album covers from the 1960s during the golden age of the LP and stereophony. It must be said that the Russian pianist today is similar to the iconic pianists that once made up the famous German label’s catalogue: Wilhelm Kempff, Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels and Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, or among those still playing today, Maurizio Pollini and Martha Argerich. Unpredictable, mystifying and often brilliant, Sokolov offers us here the echoes of three recitals given in 2019 in quite similar (and a little reverberant) acoustics, in Zaragoza, Wuppertal, and Rabbi in the province of Trento (Italian Tyrol). Three evenings, three countries and three great evenings where inspiration was in the air. An enemy of any commentary surrounding his programmes, shying away from the media and any opinions on his playing, the Russian pianist reserves his rare concerts for solo recitals in Europe, fearing travel and the stress of jet lag, which has not prevented him from memorizing an incredible amount of airline schedules off by heart. We should listen to this as one listens to a sage, from Beethoven’s Sonata No. 3 played with sovereign detachment and a clear and flowing conduct imbued with chaste poetry. Sokolov then excels in the precious miniatures, the Eminent Bagatelles Op. 119, in which Beethoven displays an admirable conciseness, concentrating both his energy and the strength of the language from the composer’s later period. Sokolov previously recorded Brahms in France in 1994 for the now-closed label Opus 111. Here he is at the top of his game with the compositions Klavierstücke Op. 118 and Op. 119, written by an older Brahms. Sokolov brings out the poignant and never-too-sad melancholy, sometimes breaking the impulses while knowing how to abandon himself and give these sublime pieces an improvised feel. The seven encores (Schubert, Rameau, Brahms, Schubert and Debussy) that close this splendid album are finely chiselled jewels generously offered to the three lucky, transfixed and attentive audiences. © François Hudry/Qobuz

In his beautifully written sleeve notes to this late Brahms solo recital from Paul Lewis, Brahms authority Matthias Kornemann draws our attention to the uniqueness of Brahms’s late oeuvre being one that Brahms himself consciously sectioned off from the rest of his output. That having made the unusual decision to cease composing aged 59, driven by the conviction that he had said all he had to say, Brahms was then lured back to his manuscript paper after hearing the playing of clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld and being suddenly possessed of a desire to penetrate, as Arnold Schoenberg put it, to the “uttermost limit of the still-expressible”. And without doubt there is a palpable autumnal quality to the ensuing late period’s works, both for clarinet and for solo piano, because while Brahms on the one hand cleaved resolutely to his faith in absolute music with no programmatic subtext, he simultaneously produced works that feel suffused with autumnal expression; of melancholic thoughts of reminiscence, farewell and death. Consequently, the late piano works – the 7 Fantasien Op. 116, the 3 Intermezzi, Op. 117, the 6 Klavierstücke Op. 118 and the 4 Klavierstücke Op. 119 – always tend to weave an especial spell when grouped together in their own recital. However that feeling does feel especially palpable across these readings from Paul Lewis, recorded in January 2018 and January 2019 at the Teldex Studio Berlin. A lot has to do with the gentle, soft-focus quality to his tone, which reaps especial dividends in pieces such as the first Op. 117 Intermezzo in E-flat with its simple cantabile intimacy, or the dreamy trills of the Op. 118 Romance in F major – and yet equally without negating the impact of high-drama declamations such as the opening of the Op. 118 Ballade in G minor. Lewis’s poetic capabilities, and his range of colour and dynamic, are giving you fresh things to appreciate with every new emotional twist and turn. Take the Op. 118 Intermezzo in E-flat minor, for instance, as he moves from despairing, whispered lines that appear lost and floating in darkness, to his defiant central climax. Or the way in which he harnesses metrical push and pull, and rubato, into helping every piece unfurl as an outpouring of constantly developing rhetoric. Sticking with Op. 118, listen to his heart-breaking hesitation just before exiting the flowing pathos of the Intermezzo in A major’s central F minor section. In short, a spellbinding set of readings. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

This digital-only Otto Klemperer collection—taken from a 95-disc box set from Warner Classics—contains his complete EMI repertoire. It presents a rich sampling of the German composer and conductor's interpretations of Brahms, Mendelssohn, and Schubert, but also serves to illustrate his only real shortcoming of Klemperer—his limiting his recordings, for the most part, to composers of central Europe.That quibble notwithstanding, this is a must-have set for collectors—not just Klemperer aficionados, but anyone wishing to hear superb renditions of the masterpieces in the set by one of the 20th Century's great conductors. Although Klemperer claimed to dislike recording, you would never guess it listening to these performances; the only explanation for his paradoxical claim being that he held to the same high standards in the studio as he did in the concert hall.Particularly enjoyable in the set is Mendelssohn's incidental music for Midsummer Night's Dream. Klemperer conducts the numbers with the requisite light and graceful touch that the music demands. Somewhat of a rarity in this recording are the vocal portions being sung in Shakespearean English.Also outstanding is a performance of the Schumann Piano Concerto with Annie Fischer as soloist, though it suffers somewhat from its rather dull recorded sound. All the works in this set, though, are beautifully performed. Adding to the listener's enjoyment are the expert remasterings done by Warner Classics' engineers in 24-bit/192 kHz sound. © Anthony Fountain/Qobuz

On June 11th 2021, Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra complete their Brahms Symphony Cycle on Channel Classics Records. This new album features Brahms: Symphony No. 3 and Serenade No. 2.A minor miracle! The recording commenced one day prior to Hungary closing its borders on September 1st, 2020. Engineer/Producer Jared Sacks had just arrived from The Netherlands. Despite the lockdown, the venue remained accessible, and the recording could be completed.---“A life’s story in ten bars – there is no more magnificent opening of a symphony than the first 34 seconds of Brahms’ Third. We hear a resolute harmony, a proud major chord followed by a twisted one on the same foundation – good and evil, heroic and mean – but it is a mere introduction to the real birth, a victorious emanation of energy, full of life and light. Each bar of this outburst takes us to a new experience: to happiness in F major, sadness in F minor, wandering into the distantly related D flat major, with a confusing dead end of the diminished 7th as if we would almost lose our way. But then a magic solution takes us on a lyrical journey reaching first to fulfillment and finally to a peaceful decline. This is how we should live.”- Iván Fischer---Brahms dedicated himself to music that was pure and abstract, which ‘portrayed’ nothing: no stories, no travel epics, no visual impressions. But nonetheless the Third does possess a personal undercurrent. The main thread of all four movements is the little motief F-A-F. With these three notes Brahms, the eternal bachelor, expressed his personal motto ‘Frei aber froh!’ - free but happy! It was a reaction to the musical signature F-A-E (‘Frei aber einsam’ - free but lonely) of his good friend the violinist Joseph Joachim. And despite all his aversion to the new rage of the symphonic poem, he delighted in the letter from Clara Schumann after she heard the symphony: ‘The opening movement depicts a delicious dawn ... the second movement an idyll, prayer in a small chapel in the woods, the flow of a brook, the rummaging of little beetles...’- From: Liner Notes by Clemens Romijn