Brahms Op 4 Herbstgefuhl for albums to download in True CD Quality (Lossless), 24-Bit Hi-Res

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Brahms: The Symphonies

Johannes Brahms

Classical - Released April 21, 2017 | BSO Classics

Hi-Res Distinctions Gramophone Editor's Choice

Otto Klemperer Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 & Tragic Overture

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Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 2 & 4 & Tragic Overture

Otto Klemperer

Classical - Released June 9, 2023 | Warner Classics

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Geoffroy Couteau Brahms : The Complete Solo Piano Works

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Brahms : The Complete Solo Piano Works

Geoffroy Couteau

Solo Piano - Released March 18, 2016 | La Dolce Volta

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions 5 de Diapason - 4F de Télérama - Pianiste Maestro - Choc de Classica - Choc Classica de l'année - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik

Stephen Hough Brahms: The Final Piano Pieces, Op. 116-119

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Brahms: The Final Piano Pieces, Op. 116-119

Stephen Hough

Classical - Released January 3, 2020 | Hyperion

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By the early 1890s, Johannes Brahms began thinking that his career was approaching its end, perhaps because of his growing awareness of his mortality, due to the deaths of several close friends. In spite of that, encouragement from Brahms' publisher Fritz Simrock and a renewed burst of creativity brought about the major works of his final years, which included chamber pieces for clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld; a collection of arrangements of German Folk Songs; the Four Serious Songs; the 11 Chorale Preludes; and the piano pieces published as the Fantasias, Op. 116, the Intermezzos, Op. 117, the Clavierstücke, Op. 118, and the Clavierstücke, Op. 119. This group of 20 keyboard pieces collectively represent the autumnal and sometimes gloomy moods that dominated Brahms' thoughts in his last decade, and have even retroactively colored the overall character his music, suggesting a nostalgic attitude in his work as a whole. Yet there is a balance between melancholy and exuberance in Brahms, and while much can be made of the sorrowful events in his life that influenced him, particularly in the Intermezzos, Op. 117 (which he considered to be lullabies for his sorrows), expressions in the late piano music are artfully conceived and perhaps less a measure of Brahms' emotional state than of his genius. Stephen Hough has recorded Brahms' piano concertos, and some of the chamber works, but this 2019 Hyperion album is his first album since 2001 devoted to Brahms' solo piano works. At this stage of his career, Hough seems to have found the right approach to these character pieces, which can be just as fiery and passionate as they are sad or sentimental. However, just as important are their structures and formal designs, which show an active and lively imagination, especially in Brahms' use of chromatic harmony and his sometimes expansive treatment of the Romantic "miniature."© TiVo

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Volodos plays Brahms

Arcadi Volodos

Solo Piano - Released April 7, 2017 | Sony Music Classical Local

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Diapason d'or de l'année - Diapason d'or - 4F de Télérama - Gramophone Award - Gramophone: Recording of the Month - Le Choix de France Musique - Choc de Classica - 5 Sterne Fono Forum Klassik

Reviews of this release by Russian pianist Arcadi Volodos, as with some of his others, are split, with a large group of favorable responses and some dissenters. It's often like this with interpretations that are brilliantly executed but fall at one end of a spectrum. In this case, you can certainly find more atmospheric and passionate readings of Brahms piano music. But among those that make you understand why the 12-tone composers loved Brahms the most, not the outer chromatic reaches of Wagner or Strauss, this one is very hard to beat. Much of the music is from the end of Brahms' career, and these pieces are famous for drawing you in with their complexities and never letting you out again. Sample the Intermezzo in B flat minor, Op. 117, No. 2, where the tune is just one of the music's parameters: harmony, register, and dynamics are all tightly controlled, even as the music has a distinctive warm-hearted sadness. In Volodos' reading, there is an uncanny quality that every single note is in its place. At just over 54 minutes, the album is short, but you won't be missing the extra minutes after the feat of concentration that listening to this music entails. In places, Volodos makes Brahms sound a bit like Mompou, the composer whose music put the pianist on the map; it sounds unusual, even odd, but let it connect with you, and it's profound. Sony's production team, working at Berlin's Teldex Studio, creates a suitably inward environment. Very highly recommended.© TiVo

Leonidas Kavakos Brahms: The Violin Sonatas

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Brahms: The Violin Sonatas

Leonidas Kavakos

Classical - Released March 31, 2014 | Decca Music Group Ltd.

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone Editor's Choice

This cycle of Brahms' violin sonatas presents two of the more charismatic artists on the current scene, neither of them particularly known for Brahms. It works quite a bit better than you might expect. In a way pianist Yuja Wang is the star of the show. The Brahms sonatas still carry a trace of the violin sonata's origins with a violin accompanying the keyboard, and it is often the pianist who leads and sets the tone; in many movements Wang establishes a warmth and depth that are a bit out of character with her usual flamboyant style. She then plays nicely off of Kavakos' lyrical lines with her own more urgent style. The deeper logic of these works might be better served by a more neutral approach, but the overall impression is of two distinct personalities in conversation about the music, and that's the chamber music ideal. An added attraction is the presence of the scherzo from the early F-A-E Sonata, a work collaboratively written by Brahms, Schumann, and Albert Dietrich; Brahms' scherzo is a sort of essay in the Beethoven short-short-short long motif, and it allows Wang to really take command. An enjoyable outing that shows Wang, especially, developing talents beyond her comfort zone. Overly closely miked sound detracts from the experience.© TiVo

Luzerner Sinfonieorchester Brahms: Symphonies Nos 1-4, Piano Quartet No. 1 (Orch. Schoenberg)

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Brahms: Symphonies Nos 1-4, Piano Quartet No. 1 (Orch. Schoenberg)

Luzerner Sinfonieorchester

Classical - Released April 7, 2023 | Warner Classics

Hi-Res Booklet

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

Antoine Tamestit Brahms : Viola Sonatas, Op. 120 - Zwei Gesänge, Op. 91

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Brahms : Viola Sonatas, Op. 120 - Zwei Gesänge, Op. 91

Antoine Tamestit

Chamber Music - Released February 12, 2021 | harmonia mundi

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It's hard to imagine how anything could have been improved upon with this Brahms recital from three of Harmonia Mundi's most sensitive and interesting artists. The programming alone is a work of art: the idea of pairing the viola versions of Brahms's two autumnal Op. 120 Clarinet Sonatas inspired by Meiningen Orchestra clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, with three further softly intimate works of his showcasing the viola's similarities with the human voice – viola and piano arrangements of Nachtigall from the six Op. 97 Songs (extra resonant, when Brahms described Mühlfeld as the nightingale of the orchestra) and the famous Op. 49 Wiegenlied, followed by the Op. 91 Zwei Gesänge for Voice, Viola and Piano. Then there's the instruments, because for Tamestit and Tiberghien these are just as important to the music's alchemy as the abilities of the performers, and their quest to find the perfect match for the penetrating, multi-shaded tones of Tamestit's Stradivarius viola eventually led them to an 1899 Bechstein piano. The result was two instruments capable of a range of colours and roundness of sound across all registers and through even the most virtuosic of passages; and that's precisely what you hear across the resultant lyrically tender, natural-feeling readings, because beyond the hand in glove chamber partnering you're hearing, their respective tones are both alive with colouristic complexities and verily glowing. Then, beyond being simply delicious, the vocal quality Tamestit draws out from the famous Wiegenlied melody serves as the perfect overture to the programme's Zwei Gesänge – shaped icing on the cake – yet another perfect combination, Tamestit's lines lovingly encircling and dovetailing with Goerne's own richly warm, gentle baritone, the polished Teldex Studio engineering casting them on satisfyingly equal footings with each other, with the piano just slightly behind. In short, absolutely gorgeous. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz

Lars Vogt Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 15 & 4 Ballades, Op. 10

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Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 15 & 4 Ballades, Op. 10

Lars Vogt

Classical - Released November 1, 2019 | Ondine

Hi-Res Booklet

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 second 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. © Ondine

Murray Perahia Brahms: Piano Works, Opp. 24, 79, 118 & 119 (Original Edition)

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Brahms: Piano Works, Opp. 24, 79, 118 & 119 (Original Edition)

Murray Perahia

Classical - Released November 12, 2010 | Sony Classical

Hi-Res Booklet Distinctions Gramophone Editor's Choice - Choc de Classica

Leonard Elschenbroich Brahms Analogue: Cello Sonatas 1&2, Four Serious Songs

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Brahms Analogue: Cello Sonatas 1&2, Four Serious Songs

Leonard Elschenbroich

Chamber Music - Released November 25, 2022 | PM Classics Ltd.

Hi-Res Booklets

The Brahms Analogue title of this release by cellist Leonard Elschenbroich and pianist Alexei Grynyuk does not refer to some abstract concept but is literal; the album was recorded onto analog tape at Abbey Road Studios and then digitally processed. It even bears the old ADD SPARS code. Audio buffs like to claim that old analog LPs had a warmer sound than their modern digital counterparts, and here, listeners can judge for themselves; even on modest sound equipment, the sound is indeed different from the pristine norm of contemporary product. Less publicized has been the fact that the interpretations of Elschenbroich and Grynyuk are distinctive, quite apart from the analog recording. Performances of Brahms, if competently executed, probably differ less than those of works by other composers, but these two players introduce an unusual amount of rhythmic freedom into the composer's two cello sonatas. On one hand, this demands an unusual degree of coordination between cellist and pianist, and Elschenbroich and Grynyuk, a significant developing partnership, show the fruits of long collaboration and lots of detail work on these particular pieces. On the other, listeners may feel that with small details prioritized in this way, the cello sonatas lose a degree of control over the long line. Again, listeners' reactions may reasonably differ. Most, however, will value the final transcriptions for cello and piano of the Vier ernste Gesänge, Op. 121, shorter works where rhythmic freedom is not a problem; these are memorable performances. This is assuredly not the usual Brahms, and listeners are invited to check them out for themselves.© James Manheim /TiVo

Herbert Blomstedt Brahms: Symphonies 3 & 4

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Brahms: Symphonies 3 & 4

Herbert Blomstedt

Symphonies - Released June 5, 2022 | PentaTone

Hi-Res Booklet

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

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98 - MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra (Live)

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Brahms: Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98 - MacMillan: Larghetto for Orchestra (Live)

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

Classical - Released October 22, 2021 | Reference Recordings

Hi-Res Booklet

Since 2007, Manfred Honeck has been based in Pittsburgh and has developed an intimate relationship with the musicians of the American orchestra there, such that each of his releases on the Reference Recordings label is a distinctive, original piece of art. A true manifesto, his version of Bruckner's Ninth (2019) was fantastic in the rude power of its colours and its furious nature; his rendition of Beethoven's Ninth, released at the beginning of 2021, was made spellbinding by its sense for the theatrical and its biting modernity. Now Manfred Honeck and his Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra present this strange and exciting coupling of two diametrically opposed worlds: Brahms' Fourth (recorded 20-22 April 2018), alongside Scotsman James MacMillan's Larghetto for Orchestra (27-29 October 2017).Under the Austrian conductor's baton, Brahms' Fourth radiates an extreme polyphonic abundance; it is reminiscent of Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt's work with the NDR Orchestra (EMI), which also shone a light on discreet exchanges, on dialogues in intermediary lines (second violins, violas, flutes, clarinets, etc). The orchestra achieves an unusual fullness here: the return of the theme (7'48) in the second movement (Andante moderato), and the path the discourse takes to its apotheosis, illustrate this. The soaring character of the following, truly giocoso Allegro confirms that Manfred Honeck's ardent performance is free of the slightest demonstrative tendency, and that it is the truth, and so far as possible the entirety of the musical text, is what matters. Supremely tranquil and majestic, the final passacaglia is the most beautiful homage to J. S. Bach, as dreamed of by Brahms, with a polyphony that celebrates the light. A very impressive outing.Commissioned by the orchestra in 2017 to celebrate Honeck's tenth anniversary as music director, MacMillan's beautiful Larghetto for Orchestra is a wide-ranging meditation. Very American in spirit, it recalls such passages as Irving Fine's Lament or some of Aaron Copland's slower works. The Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is bewitching and splendid here. © Pierre-Yves Lascar/Qobuz