The duo of violinist Christian Tetzlaff and pianist Lars Vogt released a fine live recording of Brahms' violin sonatas in the early 2000s, but they've outdone themselves with this carefully considered and highly original version. The Brahms violin sonatas are middle to late works, and especially the Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major, Op. 100, and Violin Sonata No. 3 in D minor, Op. 108, give the feeling, the one you so often get from late Brahms, that once you dive into the music you may never come out again: the motivic complications are fearsome. Tetzlaff and Vogt marry the complexity to a gentle spirit that diverges from the earlier recordings. Tetzlaff has a lovely way of taking a little pause during the transition passages, as if to let you reflect on what you've just heard, and Vogt matches him with playing that is both quiet and detailed. Sampling can't do justice to music-making of this kind, but try one of these late-sonata opening movements for an idea of what's on offer here. The rare Brahms Scherzo from the collaborative F-A-E Sonata of 1853 and excellent sound from the Sendesaal Bremen are added attractions in this Ondine release, but the main thing is really masterly and deliberate playing. © 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

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

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

Brahms' two string sextets, like other works in the genre, are generally played by established string quartets with added players. Ad hoc groupings are rarely successful for quartets, and in these Brahms works -- some of the most intricate in terms of both balance and contrapuntal interaction that he ever wrote -- the odds of success would seem to be even lower. Yet this version, recorded live at the Aix-en-Provence Easter Festival in 2016, succeeds brilliantly, perhaps because of the presence of a pair of Capuçon brothers, perhaps because of the dominating presence of violinist Renaud Capuçon, who talks in the booklet about his longtime desire to record these pieces, or perhaps for some more elusive reason. It may be French Brahms, all delicacy and quiet and even humor, but delicacy works well in these pieces where so many details are hidden in the counterpoint. Sample the first movement of the String Sextet No. 2 in G major, Op. 36, where the tonal instability of the beginning, with everything growing from the marvelous leading-tone-to-tonic resolution, is nailed. In the hands of these players, the passage sounds like early Debussy, and yet its connections to the main body of the movement are palpable. Everywhere there is evidence of deep acquaintance with the work, even if the group came together only for this concert. The only downside is that the live sound is barely adequate, but this is Brahms to note well, even to treasure.© TiVo

Arnold Schoenberg called him "Brahms the Progressive". Whilst Johannes Brahms’s musical language and formal cosmos were deeply rooted in the past, by burrowing into the music of Bach and Beethoven he brought forth compositional fabrics of a tight-knit perfection that pointed far into the future. Yet, over years of continuously evolving interpretations, Brahms’s oeuvre has acquired an inappropriate heaviness more likely to conceal the fabric of his music than to unveil the subtle intricacies of its "developing variations", to quote Schoenberg’s term for his compositional method. András Schiff emphasizes precisely this point in his new recording of the two piano concertos with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. These developments, need it be said, are also related to changing performance conditions and transformations in society. But it is not always easy to say where the causal chain began. What is certain is that the growth of a global audience for music – with a corresponding increase in volume levels, larger concert halls and ever more massive ensembles and sturdier instruments – has led to a distorted image of Brahms that cries out for correction. After all, as Schiff puts it, Brahms’s music is "transparent, sensitive, differentiated and nuanced in its dynamics". In order to bring this to light, however, we must recall the performance conditions of Brahms’s day and reconstruct them as best we can. The Meiningen Court Orchestra, one of Europe’s most progressive and highly acclaimed orchestras of the era, and Brahms’s personal favourite (he conducted it in the première of his Fourth Symphony in 1885), consisted at times of no more than 49 musicians with nine first violins. Moreover, the pianos he preferred, mainly built by the firms of Streicher, Bösendorfer and Blüthner, were more limpid in their sound, richer in overtones, and responded to a lighter touch. András Schiff already turned to period instruments on some of his earlier recordings for ECM’s New Series, including his two double albums with Schubert’s late piano works, for which he used a fortepiano built by Franz Brodmann in 1820. He had used the same instrument for his double album with Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations, contrasting this version with a reading of the same work on a Bechstein grand of 1921. Now Sir András has chosen the conductor-less Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, with its period instruments, for his recording of the two Brahms Concertos. And he plays an historic grand piano built by the Leipzig firm of Julius Blüthner in 1859. The result is nothing less than an attempt "to recreate and restore the works, to cleanse the music and to liberate it from the burden of the –often questionable- trademarks of performing tradition". At times the recordings take on the quality of chamber music, as is especially telling in the last two movements of the B-flat Major Concerto, Op. 83. The result is a performance that approaches the original character of the sound, revealing those layers of the works that emphasise the dialogue between soloist and orchestra – and dispelling the preconception that the Second Concerto is a "symphony with piano obbligato". © ECM New Series

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

And why not pair the Brahms Violin Concerto with Bartók? While the assembly is probably a first in the history of discography, it is true that Brahms and Bartók are of Hungarian descent - well, Brahms comes from Gypsy-Viennese origins rather than purely Hungarian traditions, but the heart is most certainly there - so too is that ever-present tendancy for ample melodic phrasing, so aptly captured by the violin where a piano simply falls short. Moreover, only thirty short years separate the two works: one for 1878, another in 1908... The Bartók Concerto comes with a story: the composer had offered it up as gift of a somewhat unrequited love to a young Stefi Geyer, who kept the score to her death, without ever playing it. Meanwhile, Bartók wrote another concerto thirty years later, at one time thought to be the one and only of its kind and genre. The "first" concerto was created in 1958 under the leadership of Paul Sacher. For this recording with Antonio Pappano, Dutch violinist Janine Jansen is completely at ease in the great concerto repertoire. Jansen plays a 1727 Stradivarius and brings great passion, emotion and skill to the world chamber music. The Brahms Concerto was recorded live in Rome in February 2015, the Bartók in London in August 2014. © SM / Qobuz

There is no single radical departure in these performances of Brahms' two sonatas for cello and piano and Schumann's Fünf Stücke im Volkston, Op. 102. Instead, what happens is that various factors come together in performances of rare variety and intensity. Cellist Christian Poltéra and pianist Ronald Brautigam have worked together before and have evolved into a chamber music unit of great cohesion. Brautigam plays a copy of an 1868 Streicher piano; it is not exactly a historical instrument, but it has a precise, penetrating quality that suits the interpretation here beautifully. Póltera has a deep understanding of these works, offering readings that bring out the full range of the music's expressive traits. The Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, Op. 38, loses its usual dour, growling quality; sample the exuberant finale. It has been suggested that the word "Volkston" in Schumann's Fünf Stücke im Volkston might better be translated as "popular style" than "folk style"; annotator Michael Struck suggests that the pieces are related to Schumann's sympathy for the republican movements of 1848, and Póltera imbues them with rare depth and lyricism. Of course, another side of Brahms is the intellectual complexity that gives one the delightful suspicion that one will never emerge from the thicket. The opening material of the Cello Sonata No. 2 in F major, Op. 99, has very rarely seemed so pregnant with implications and had those implications so deeply worked out. There are many available performances of all these works (perhaps a bit fewer of the Schumann), but these are marvelous and worth hearing for anyone. This release made classical best-seller lists in early 2024.© 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

The old model for creating a hit classical recording -- big-name soloist plus big-name conductor in major repertory work -- is not so common anymore, but this live Brahms recording from the Staatskapelle Berlin under Venezuela's Gustavo Dudamel, with Argentine-Israeli-Palestinian-Spanish pianist Daniel Barenboim as soloist, shows that there's life in the concept yet. One could point to the virtues of pianist and conductor separately: it's a rare septuagenarian who can combine power and clear articulation of detail the way Barenboim does, and Dudamel builds a vast sweep in, especially, the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15. But it's the way that the two work together that really makes news. Chalk it up to shared South American heritage or to whatever the listener wants, but the way the orchestra and piano define separate spheres and work them together is extraordinary. Again, it is in the Piano Concerto No. 1 and its Beethovenian drama that their mutual understanding is most evident, but there is a sense of great variety powerfully unified throughout. Deutsche Grammophon, working in the Philharmonie in Berlin, delivers live sound that's just about as good as it gets.© TiVo