Among the many young talents which are currently developing on the musical scene, a select few are particularly spellbinding. One of these is Florian Noack whose generosity and solar brilliance shine through from the very first listening. His vivaciousness and curiosity are thrilling and infectious. His "twenty-five" fingers gallop marvellously across the keyboard. And most important of all, his sincerity and humility command respect.  A traveller to the heart of national folk musics, he shares in their unique flavours, by turns exquisite and powerful; he sometimes offers his own unique arrangements... Pianist Florian Noack invites us here on a stunning musical adventure: his first recording for La Dolce Volta, after several albums for Ars Produktion and Artalinna. Florian Noack's album is structured around dance: Brahms, Grieg, Schubert, Rachmaninov, Szymanowski, Komitas, Janáček, Nín, Martucci, Grainger, for a virtuous, poetical and intimate sequence. Florian Noack deploys all the range of his talent to bring us the quintessence of these pieces, which in other hands would seem banal. This is an utterly charming album, which will not leave anyone indifferent: that's for sure! © La Dolce Volta

All of the principals here were close associates of the late pianist Lars Vogt, and this Ondine release, which landed on classical best-seller charts in the autumn of 2023, is intended as a tribute to him. Vogt loved Brahms, and the main attraction is a performance of the Double Concerto in A minor for violin, cello, and orchestra, Op. 102, by Christian Tetzlaff, Tanja Tetzlaff, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin under the usually somewhat cerebral conductor Paavo Järvi, who turns in quite a passionate performance here. The Double Concerto is structured unlike anything else Brahms (or really anyone else) ever wrote, opening with quasi-improvisatory passages in the cello and then the violin that are reconciled and brought within a Classical structure as the movement proceeds. The Tetzlaffs, in an interview-format booklet, suggest that the opening represents the feuding Brahms and violinist Joseph Joachim, for whom the concerto was meant as a kind of peace offering. Whatever the actual case, the idea results in a performance of considerable tension. Also figuring into the biographical interpretation is the inclusion of Giovanni Battista Viotti's Violin Concerto No. 22 in A minor, which at first glance may seem an odd pairing. The work was a favorite of both Brahms and Viotti, and hints of Viotti's music seem to recur in the Brahms concerto, again as a kind of peace offering or, it has been suggested, a subconscious reference. The album ends with a warm performance by Tanja Tetzlaff of Silent Woods from Dvořák's From the Bohemian Forest, Op. 68, not directly connected to the biographical theme but full of a spirit of calm reconciliation. It is a fine conclusion to a powerful album. © James Manheim /TiVo

Songs of love, longing and innocence. On this third Pentatone album "Nostalgia", Magdalena Kožená presents Bartók’s Village Scenes, Mussorgsky’s The Nursery and a selection of Brahms songs, together with acclaimed pianist Yefim Bronfman. Sung in Slovak, Russian and German, these songs on love, longing and innocence show three master composers transforming folk traditions into their unique musical styles. Kožená demonstrates her vocal mastery once more, and this recording with Bronfman is the result of a two-decades-spanning congenial artistic partnership. © Pentatone

In these love songs in waltz style for chorus or solo voices accompanied by piano four hands, Brahms freely indulged his taste for Viennese folk music. The RIAS-Kammerchor instils a wonderful inner life in these musical landscapes, sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, punctuated here by a selection from the Hungarian Dances – also eminently popular in their inspiration. © harmonia mundi

Emmanuelle Bertrand and Pascal Amoyel celebrate their twenty years together as a cello and piano duet. It is hardly surprising that they chose to mark this anniversary with the music of Brahms, a composer who has been a constant on their beautiful journey together: beyond his two ultra-romantic sonatas, they take the listeners to an even deeper emotional realm, that of his lieder, splendidly “sung” here by the cello! © harmonia mundi

In 2022, legendary cellist Antonio Meneses celebrates his 65th birthday and the 40th anniversary of winning first prize and the gold medal at the 1982 Tchaikovsky Competition. Shortly after that triumph Antonio made a renowned recording of Brahms’ Double Concerto with conductor Herbert von Karajan. He revisits the composer’s music on his eleventh recording for AVIE Records and his first of Brahms’ two Cello Sonatas, generously paired with a selection of lieder arrangements. Antonio mines Brahms’ baritonal sound world, extracting the full expressive range of the cello. Similar qualities infuse a selection of seven Lieder in arrangements that sound so effective on the cello that one cannot help but wonder whether somewhere in the back of his mind Brahms had the sound of the instrument – he was, after all, an accomplished player in his youth, and it would remain central to his chamber music output throughout his life. © AVIE Records

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The virtuoso Marc-André Hamelin isn't the first pianist one would think of when it comes to Fauré's music, but he has recorded all kinds of things, even ragtime, and as it happens, he does quite well with the dense miniatures heard on this album. Fauré's Nocturnes are at some level connected to Chopin's but are quite different, with murky chromaticism, especially in the later ones, setting the night atmosphere. Fauré is thought of as a musical conservative, but one would hardly know it from the pieces here that stubbornly refuse to settle on a tonal center. The counterpoint is complex, and a successful performance is one that untangles it. There isn't big, pianistic virtuosity here, but Hamelin's ability to balance Fauré's registers is virtuosic in its own way. The Barcarolles, a genre not much pursued by other composers but for Fauré seeming to allow rays of Venetian sunshine into his rather closed-in French world, are lighter but basically cut from the same cloth. Things lighten up with the final Dolly Suite, Op. 56, where Hamelin performs with his wife, Cathy Fuller. (For those wondering, neither Mi-a-ou nor the Kitty-valse has anything to do with cats.) Although Hyperion's church sound is not idiomatic, it does not damage the remarkable clarity in what is a significant entry in the Fauré discography, one that landed on classical best-seller lists in the late summer of 2023.© James Manheim /TiVo

For most listeners' purposes, Riccardo Chailly's set of Johannes Brahms' four symphonies will seem standard-issue, with respectable and uncontroversial interpretations from an esteemed conductor, and rich and resonant performances by the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Even in the choice of filler pieces, the set includes the three orchestral works that are usually packaged with the symphonies: the Tragic Overture, the Haydn Variations, and the Academic Festival Overture. However, this set offers welcome suprises and extra value for the purchase. Two orchestral arrangements of the Interludes, Opp. 116 and 117 for piano, are included, along with instrumental versions of a handful of Liebeslieder Waltzes and three of the orchestrated Hungarian Dances, which may be incentives to listeners who are looking for a little more. Also included are Brahms' original version of the Andante of the First Symphony and the alternate opening of the Fourth. But no one should invest in a set solely on the basis of these extras, however unusual they may be. Since first recording the cycle with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, where he offered a rather heavy-handed modern take on the symphonies, Chailly has gone back to an older, more historically informed style of playing Brahms that was familiar to conductors of the early 20th century. The music is lighter and more transparent, so in some ways, his recordings are sometimes reminiscent of classic performances by Bruno Walter, George Szell, and other revered conductors. For traditionalists, this is a fine set to own, especially if a fresh digital recording is needed.© TiVo

After two glorious albums devoted to Chopin and Liszt, Benjamin Grosvenor continues his exploration of the Romantic period by tackling the third leading faction of the genre, Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms (who was a close friend of both the Schumann’s). The Kreisleriana, like many of Schumann’s other cycles, are a virtuosic reflection on his artistic 'doubles'; Eusebius, the melancholic dreamer, and Florestan, the feverish and passionate rake. The Three Romances Op.28 expresses Schumann's eternal and unconditional love for Clara, who saw in these pieces "the most beautiful love dialogues". In the last movement of the Sonata No. 3 Op.14, Schumann makes an elegant reference to his own Kreisleriana. Clara Wieck's Variations on a Theme of Schumann later inspired Brahms to write his own variations on the same theme. There are similarities in character to his Intermezzi at the end of the album. With his singular and unmistakable touch, Benjamin Grosvenor delivers an interpretation of unadulterated purity, with a simple and luminous audio recording that gives these great passages their deserved nobility. © Pierre Lamy/Qobuz

Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra have recorded the tone poems of Richard Strauss for BR Klassik since 2010, and they have already presented the popular Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche (Till Eulenspiegels Merry Pranks), Don Juan, and Ein Heldenleben (A Hero's Life), in impressive performances for the German label. This 2016 album offers two more Strauss favorites, the musical representation of a mountain hike, Eine Alpensinfonie (An Alpine Symphony), and the moving depiction of a man's last moments, Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration). These works reflect dramatically different sides of Strauss, where the virtuosic music and opulent orchestration of Eine Alpensinfonie suggest a robust extroversion, while the deathbed ruminations of Tod und Verklärung and its final vision of transcendence are more introspective. Jansons elicits powerful playing from the orchestra, and draws out resplendent sonorities that are thrilling for their brilliance and force. Yet Strauss' softer music may hold more expressive depth, particularly the tone painting of "Night" at the beginning of Ein Alpensinfonie, and the fragile, hesitant opening of Tod und Verklärung, which are among the subtlest and most affecting passages in all of Strauss' works. The sound of this standard CD is rich and vibrant, and practically every detail can be heard clearly.© TiVo

When I can’t be the only one who has the Pavel Haas Quartet’s magnificent Dvořák quintets collaboration with Boris Giltburg and Pavel Nikl still ringing in my ears (and indeed making repeat returns to my stereo), I equally can’t be the only one whose heart is beating faster upon first sight of this Brahms-shaped reunion for them. So, to all of you for whom the above does indeed apply, know that these readings will if anything exceed your already-high expectations. First up is the Op. 34 Piano Quintet in dark F minor, an early-career work which began life in 1862 as a string quintet with two cellos, channelling Schubert’s great C major String Quintet, but which ultimately – at the suggestion of both Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim – needed a second look. In 1864, therefore, Brahms reworked the original to create both a sonata for two pianos and this piano quartet – drawing from Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata, while also still very audibly paying homage to the Schubert Quintet, heard especially clearly at the close of the Scherzo via its final C being preceded by a dramatic D-flat. As for the Pavel Haas Quartet and Boris Giltburg, think multi-timbred, metrically fleet-footed, heart-filled playing, spanning the dynamic range, which thoroughly realises both the work’s turbulent passion and its highly symphonic feel, with the ability to switch the emotional dial in a heartbeat. Highlights include an absolute blinder of a Scherzo for the conviction of its emotional extremes, and at its most high-octane moments the rhythmic drive and spring of their attack, and the overall sound’s satisfyingly powerful, woody thwack. Then next we jump to 1890 and to the Op. 111 two-viola String Quintet in G major Brahms is said to have initially intended as his last musical work, its language thus nodding to his musical life’s influences – from Beethoven to Schubert, and from waltzing Johann Strauss to Wagner, with further colour by way of the Hungarian motifs he loved to pepper his work with. And again, it’s a rare treat to have such a sensation of unbridled freedom and singing exuberance at the music’s most impassioned climaxes as we have here. Equally affecting are the moments where the music suddenly retreats into whispers either sweetly tender or darkly tragic (head to the first movement for some beauty). There’s also the delicious rhythmic swing of their dance impetus when things get folky. Essentially, don’t hesitate. This is an album for life. © Charlotte Gardner/Qobuz