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Honegger: Symphonies Nos 1-5, Pacific 231, Mouvement symphonique No. 3
Serge Baudo, Czech Philharmonic
Classical - Released January 1, 1991 | Supraphon a.s.
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Brahms & Bruckner: Motets
Anton Bruckner
Classical - Released October 30, 2015 | Signum Records
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Maybe the combination of Brahms and Bruckner with the British choir Tenebrae sounds a little strange: the choir has specialized in Renaissance music and generally in music built on that sound ideal. Maybe the combination of the abstract, devout, and technically demanding Bruckner with the friendly and humanist Brahms sounds a little strange, too. But it all works out very nicely. In the 19th century, when choral music was a bigger part of everyday musical life than it is now, this would have been a program any good municipal choir would have loved to present. And Tenebrae bulks up its style a bit. They hit Bruckner's punishing high notes with the requisite perfect chill, and you can sample one of the large motets at the beginning, such as Ecce sacerdos (track three), for the full range of this choir's remarkable technical control under director Nigel Short. In Brahms pieces like the familiar "How lovely are thy dwellings" from the German Requiem, Op. 45 (track 11), the choir might even be called unusually weighty. Signum hits the ball out of the park sonically with engineering work at London's Temple Church, and the end result is a satisfying and unusual choral disc. A substantial donation from each copy of this album sold goes to Macmillan Cancer Support.© TiVo
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La Playlist Classique
Classical Music: 50 of the Best, Radio Musica Clasica, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Johann Strauss II, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johannes Brahms
Classical - Released October 19, 2019 | Armasi
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Chopin, Debussy & Ravel
Kim Bernard
Classical - Released June 17, 2022 | Warner Classics
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In a way, young pianist Kim Bernard sets himself a big challenge by choosing very standard repertory works for his debut album over unusual pieces. After all, to make an impression with Chopin, Debussy, and Ravel is more difficult than it is with, say, Charles-Valentin Alkan or Louise Farrenc. Furthermore, Bernard is the kind of player whose virtues come from thorough training, of the sort that can squeeze the life out of the music. He is not a subjective pianist but rather one who executes the music cleanly down to its small details. As it happens, he has the chops to impress listeners anyhow, and one wants to hear more from this artist. He is at his absolute best in Ravel's Le tombeau de Couperin, a neo-Baroque work whose ornaments ring brilliantly under Bernard's hands. His angular reading of Debussy's L'isle joyeuse is also memorable, even if his pieces from Book I of Images may be too dry for some tastes. There is absolutely no shortage of recordings of the Chopin works at the beginning of the program, but Bernard persuades that he has something new to say about them; consider the entrancing Berceuse, Op. 57. With excellent sound from the Studio de Meudon, this is an auspicious debut.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Alkan Grande Sonate, "Les Quatre Ages", Symphonie Pour Piano Solo
Vincenzo Maltempo
Classical - Released May 2, 2012 | Piano Classics
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5 de Diapason
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Piano Music - Schumann, R. / Kabalevsky, D. / Schubert, F. / Bartok , B. (Such Stuff As Dreams - Lullaby Album for Children and Adults)
Carol Rosenberger
Classical - Released September 30, 1997 | Delos
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Brunch Classical Music
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Classical Music: 50 of the Best, Claude Debussy, Edvard Grieg, Johannes Brahms, Johann Sebastian Bach,
Classical - Released March 10, 2020 | Armasi
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Antonín Dvořák: Symphonie du nouveau monde
Philippe Fournier
Classical - Released October 7, 2000 | iMD-ORCHESTRE-CONFLUENCES
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Debussy: Images, Children's Corner, Masques & L'isle joyeuse
Walter Gieseking
Classical - Released November 11, 2022 | Warner Classics
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Debussy: Complete Orchestral Work
Jun Märkl
Classical - Released January 30, 2012 | Naxos
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For Clara: Works by Schumann & Brahms
Hélène Grimaud
Classical - Released September 8, 2023 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Robert Schumann was never more purely Romantic than in his set of piano pieces Kreisleriana, Op. 16. The set is of extramusical, literary inspiration, taking its name from a character in stories by E.T.A. Hoffmann, and it features the explosive imagination of the young Schumann at its best. Schumann announced the work, which he apparently wrote in four days, rather breathlessly to his inamorata, Clara, and more than almost any other work of his, it seems to spill over the boundaries of the short piano piece. Hélène Grimaud has recorded the work before, but she seems to have added intensity this time around. She is nervously excited in the faster virtuosic numbers, but sample No. 4 to hear her marvelous control over the tonal instability that appears in many of these pieces. The Brahms Intermezzi, Op. 117, were also "For Clara," sent to Clara Schumann toward the end of his life; the two had remained friends, and here, in Grimaud's evocation of tempestuous old-school pianism, one is stirred to wonder what Clara sounded like playing this music. The connection of the nine Lieder und Gesänge, Op. 32, of Brahms to Clara is less clear, and the set, with baritone Konstantin Krimmel on the vocals, may seem like an afterthought; the three performances on the album were all made at different places and times. However, taken on its own terms, it is a fine performance of this set, consisting entirely of settings of texts by Eastern poets. Krimmel catches the rather mystical nature of the songs, and Grimaud, with whom he has worked in the past, is effective as an accompanist. This is an important entry in Grimaud's catalog, with a Kreisleriana that is as fine as any.© James Manheim /TiVo
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Brahms: The Symphonies
Johannes Brahms
Classical - Released April 21, 2017 | BSO Classics
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Ravel: L'Œuvre pour piano
Philippe Bianconi
Solo Piano - Released September 15, 2023 | La Dolce Volta
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Ravel's piano works include some of the most popular keyboard pieces of the 20th century, so pianist Philippe Bianconi has plenty of competition for this double-album complete cycle. Of course, one advantage of the complete set is that it can include the less common pieces like Ravel's musical impressions of Borodin and Chabrier and the Menuet en Ut dièse mineur ("Minuet in C sharp minor"). These lesser-known works, mostly miniatures, fit Bianconi's style beautifully; he is a precise, concise player who brings out Ravel's considerable rhythmic subtlety. His Ravel performances tap into a long French tradition stretching back to Robert Casadesus and his wife, Gaby, who was one of Bianconi's teachers. Imbued with the French conservatory values of clarity and restraint, Bianconi sacrifices mood for clean execution. In Le Tombeau de Couperin, he is wonderful, one of the very best available, catching the ways Ravel stretches the Baroque rhythms in a really uncanny way. Many pianists can handle the technical challenges of Gaspard de la nuit these days, but few can seem as effortless while doing so. In music that depends more on extramusical references, such as the four-hand Ma mère l'Oye (recorded with Clément Lefebvre), some listeners may want a bit more color, while others will find Bianconi's approach bracing and fresh, with an evocative Miroirs. Sample several different works. Most listeners will agree that the La Dolce Volta label's sound, from the Grande Salle at the Metz Arsenal, is ideal for the music and the music-making here.
© James Manheim /TiVo
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Brahms : The Complete Solo Piano Works
Geoffroy Couteau
Solo Piano - Released March 18, 2016 | La Dolce Volta
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Brahms: Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 & Academic Festival Overture
Otto Klemperer
Classical - Released June 2, 2023 | Warner Classics
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Nelson Freire: Brahms
Nelson Freire
Classical - Released August 25, 2017 | Decca Music Group Ltd.
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The title Brahms might seem an odd one for this collection of Brahms piano pieces, containing one piano sonata and an assortment of 12 short pieces, mostly from the end of the composer's life. Yet the program does cover a good deal of Brahms' keyboard thinking: piano compositions, except for variation sets, are sparse during his middle years. The Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, dates from 1853, when Brahms was 20: it is youthful music par excellence, with five movements and a shifting set of moods that pose interpretive challenges for the pianist. Freire has been playing the sonata since his teenage years, and he manages to make the music sound deliberate and inevitable despite its rather feverish intensity. With the exception of the final Waltz in A flat major, Op. 39, No. 15, Freire plays the rest of the music chronologically. The listener has the sense of being drawn into a vortex of complexity as each work seems to explore new structural possibilities. You could sample almost anywhere, but try the uniquely flexible tonal implications of the first of the four Klavierstücke, Op. 119, a work that shows clearly why the "conservative" Brahms was so beloved by the 12-tone composers to come. The only possible way you might not like Freire's deeply thought-out, precise performances of these is if you like your Brahms on the warmer side, but the dispassionate, investigative way Freire has it is probably the fastest way into these works that really take a lifetime to appreciate. A major Brahms release, with sympathetic engineering from Decca at the Friedrich-Ebert-Halle in Hamburg.© TiVo
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Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre: Céphale et Procris
Reinoud Van Mechelen
Classical - Released February 9, 2024 | Château de Versailles Spectacles
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Berlioz : Symphonie fantastique (Live)
Les Siècles
Classical - Released October 25, 2019 | harmonia mundi
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5 de Diapason
The large collection of antique instruments at Les Siècles' command makes its recordings more than just speculative period exercises, but something approaching musical time travel. Led since 2003 by its founder, François-Xavier Roth, this singular French orchestra has given thrilling historically-informed recreations of the repertoire of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries on vintage instruments that were available to the musicians of the time, crafted by hand, and possessing the unique sonorities and tunings of different regions. For this 2019 album from Harmonia Mundi, Roth and his musicians play Hector Berlioz's hallucinatory Symphonie fantastique and the dramatic overture Les Francs-Juges with marvelous orchestral colors and a striking textural clarity that almost makes their distinctive characteristics seem especially highlighted. However, this recording isn't meant to be a sonic showcase for audiophiles, because the drama, musicality, and visceral excitement of the performances soon override the novelty of instrumentation, and the overall effect of the presentation is a startling reassessment and a refreshing change from the weightier Berlioz of a Thomas Beecham or a Colin Davis. No one could write for brass more blazingly than Berlioz, and his skillful handling of the woodwinds is even more apparent when heard with early Romantic timbres. The ultimate pleasure of this disc, though, is found in the cohesion, agility, and passion of the group's playing, and Roth's confident leadership comes through in his precision and alert attention to details. Highly recommended.
© TiVo
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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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Duo (Œuvres de Brahms, Chostakovitch, Debussy, Schumann)
Sol Gabetta
Classical - Released October 2, 2012 | Deutsche Grammophon (DG)
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Diapason d'or de l'année
Argentine-Swiss cellist Sol Gabetta and the nationally unclassifiable Hélène Grimaud (who is listed first in the graphics here, presumably so that Deutsche Grammophon may capitalize on her former enfant terrible reputation) are both known for a tendency toward interpretations that push the extremes. Grimaud, in fact, has named Glenn Gould, still among the greatest extremists of all, as an exemplar. But, perhaps because the necessity of working in a duo puts a damper on strong manifestations of individualism, the two play it pretty straight on this, the first duo recording for both. Their interpretations in this diverse recital of Romantic and modern pieces, in fact, tend distinctly toward the quiet side. Although Grimaud has resolutely declined to classify herself as French (she is of North African Jewish background, spent some years in Florida, and then lived in Switzerland), this is a chamber recital in the classic French vein, with plenty of impeccably elegant passagework from both players and an absence of emphatic gesture even in the Drei Fantasiestücke, Op. 73, of Schumann, which are arch-Romantic pieces. The Brahms Sonata for piano and cello No. 1, Op. 38, gets a very light touch that does delightful things with the contrapuntal finale. The pair are clearly at home in the Debussy cello sonata, and really the only piece that falls flat is the concluding Cello Sonata, Op. 40, of Shostakovich, where the restrained performance misses the icy fear of the slow movement and the sarcastic snap that was so characteristic of the composer's early years. The sound, from the Philharmonie Essen hall, is a bit too spacious for the music but is up to the task of capturing clearly the fine detail work on exhibit here.© TiVo
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