Brahms Solo Piano Works

[Don]

For the Handel Variations, my favored versions are:  Fleischer, Cohen, Solomon, Petri, Petrushansky, Katchen, Boriskin and Kovacevich.  Avoid Pratt and Ax.

[head-case]

Very enthusiastic about the Katchen set.  I also like Hough's hyperion recording of Ballades and Sonata #3.

[anasazi]

My very first Brahms piano solo recording was the original LP of Glenn Gould playing the late Intermezzi. And I still quite love that recording.  At the time I had no real idea of the temperment of the pianist and the composer, just that it quickly became my favorite piano solo recording.  It has been reissued on CD by Sony in various combinations with Ballades, etc. Now that I am older I still love it and especially the way that Gould sort of opens up the dense Brahmsian textures like no other pianist.  Especially Op. 118 No. 2 which is just breathtaking. I would very highly recommend the CD reissue of this classic.

[val]

Bogey

What specific recordings do you have that you enjoy?  Thanks!

2nd Sonata                    / Arrau
3rd Sonata opus 5          / Clifford Curzon
Ballades opus 10             / Arrau
Händel Variations            / Moiseiwitsch
Paganini Variations          / Arrau
Rhapsodies opus 79         / Radu Lupu
Fantasias opus 116         / Gilels  (1983)
Intermezzi opus 117, Klavierstücke opus 118 and 119 / Radu Lupu
Valses opus 39               / Duo Crommelynck
Hungarian Dances            / Steven and Stjn Kolacny

[Holden]

I know it's been mentioned before but I also have this outstanding recording.

[greg]

lupu yes!

0:) 0:) 0:) 0:)

i have Abbey Simon playing the Paganini Variations..... any videos on youtube that may be better?

[Don Isler]

I'm slightly partial to some of the performances on KASP 57651 (www.kasprecords.com).

[dirkronk]

The Handel Variations will blow you away, as will the sonata No. 3, and all of it really! I can't recommend these enough!

http://www.amazon.ca/Pno-Cto-Johannes-Brahms/dp/B000003XIN/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1201295924&sr=1-4

http://www.amazon.ca/Pno-Cto-Johannes-Brahms/dp/B000003XIO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1201295924&sr=1-1

Thanks for the links. I looked in the vinyl trove at home and found that I have Solomon's two Brahms piano concerti but none of his Brahms solo works. Drat! This means I have to decide whether to pay the freight for replicating the concerti on CD in order to get the solo stuff, too, or simply do without. Hmmmm.


Dirk

[Tyson]

Funny enough, I love the Katchen set of solo works, but am underwhelmed by his set of brahms concerto's.  But I guess it just goes to show that the solo works (and the chamber works) really benefit from a lean and clean approach.  Brahms is so inherently emotional in his music that it is a mistake to pour on the "deep feelings" in performance.  Doing so pushes it out of the "emotional" realm and straight to the "schmaltz" realm.

[ChamberNut]

One of the best discoveries for me yet since I fell in love with classical music. 

Today, I sampled Brahms 4 Ballades for solo piano, Op. 10 on Naxos (I. Biret, piano)

and now another great discovery for me.  The 2 piano, 4 hands arrangement of the Dm Piano Concerto.  Christian Kohn and Silke-Thora Matthies on piano.

[jwinter]

...and now another great discovery for me.  The 2 piano, 4 hands arrangement of the Dm Piano Concerto.  Christian Kohn and Silke-Thora Matthies on piano.

Some of those are quite good.  For an interesting experience, try their recording of the German Requiem -- it really helped me to hear the work in a new way.  There's a lot of complexity and little details that often get buried under the choir and boomy acoustics in full-scale recordings; I rather liked it.

[ChamberNut]

Some of those are quite good.  For an interesting experience, try their recording of the German Requiem -- it really helped me to hear the work in a new way.  There's a lot of complexity and little details that often get buried under the choir and boomy acoustics in full-scale recordings; I rather liked it.

Oh yes, I intend on checking out alot of the other 4 hand piano arrangements, including the German Requiem. 

[George]

Was just about to recommend this. Yes, I completely agree, they're such wonderful performances. So un-Gould like yet so entirely Gould-like too. Also, his ballades are great (though more standardly Gouldian) and the two Rhapsodies are also very nice.

You will never heard a more mezmerizing performance of the 1st and 2nd intermezzi of op.117 (I think that's the opus number)

Oh, yes!

Gould's Brahms is sublime! I strongly recommend his Ballades, Rhapsodies and late piano works.

[George]

Bill,

Having heard almost all of this set, I can safely say you should grab it if you see it in the used bins. Arrau's Brahms is wonderful. His gorgeous tone is put to good use and his technique is never in question. Great stuff!

Lupu is very good too, his set is in print and well worth checking out.

[Mandryka]

Bill,

Having heard almost all of this set, I can safely say you should grab it if you see it in the used bins. Arrau's Brahms is wonderful. His gorgeous tone is put to good use and his technique is never in question. Great stuff!

Lupu is very good too, his set is in print and well worth checking out.

The Brahms recording from him which I like the most isn't in that box. It's a live recording of the Handel Variations on Ermitage (it comes with Gaspard and something else -- can't remember) Anyway, it's one of those special Arrau moments of intensity, like his Schumann Fantasie on Ermitage.

What do you think of the Paganini Variations on that set? Too slow?

If you're interested in the later stuff, then the two discs which have given me a lot of pleasure are Ranki's and (most of all) Yudina's --  you have Yudina's Intermezzoss I think because the come on her CD of the Hammerklavier. Those performances seem to me to find more variety of feeling, and to be played with more forcefulness, than Lupu (Arrau of course doesn't play late Brahms) It seems to me that most pianists do two emotions in late Brahms -- hectoring-maudlin and (rarely) hectoring-merry. I want a bit more than that!

Other composers whose late Brahms seems to be very effective are Gieseking, Richter (try the amazing intermezzo that comes as an encore to the Leipzig Beethoven concert, or the Brahms/Bach disc on Live Classics, or his Handel Variations) and Gilels (the Orfeo record with Op 116 is a great recording -- very candid and authentic expression to my ears (I'm not sure that means anything! Also outstanding is the PV Bk 1 on a recording from Japan with Schumann's Symphonic Etudes.) And you know, Rubinstein and Kempff are good in a way: for Kempff go to the 50s recording on his Great Pianists.

Possibly the single best Intermezzo recording I know is from Neuhaus on youtube. Unfortunately the rest of his Brahms on CD isn't quite up to this high standard.

There's also a good Yudina recording of the Handel Variations -- on Melodyia. I prefer it to the one on Vista Vera.

But the best Handel Variations is from Moiseiwitsch -- both recordings are good I think. And try Cherkassky(BBC) . I would say avoid Bolet's.

A disc to avoid, IMO, is Angelich's recording of the Intermezzi. Wooden. But there are good concert bootlegs knocking about all over the web. And there's also a great Brahms concert from Cassard on filestube.

Angelich's Paganini Variations are much better -- though they won't suit you if you're looking for a virtuoso performance in the style of Michelangeli. If you'll like Arrau though, you will like Angelich. He is very like Arrau in some ways.

Also disappointing for me was Backhaus (a set of early recording on Music and Arts) But I obviously have a blind spot for him since I think he's wack in everything.

Early Brahms I don't much care for.


http://www.youtube.com/v/2DdLzGcYIGQ

[mjwal]

Gosh (antique expostulation, to demonstrate how old I am ), Mandryka, you really got me going there: after drinking in that Neuhaus Intermezzo - starts dryly but then an Innigkeit one seldom hears -  I tried Gieseking in the same & a few more: very fluent, certainly, but lacking that inward quality - and then plunged into Op.24. Started with Fleisher because reading your well-considered reflections I thought "Hey, that Fleisher I have on LP wasn't so bad". Oh dear. My attention wandered, I thought "What's wrong - perhaps I am out of sympathy with this work, fergeddit", so I picked the pickup up after 15 or so minutes - couldn't continue. What a disappointment. Then Moisewitsch as you recommended (Testament; haven't listened to that for quite a while): bingo, instead of something like a dry Hindemith imitation there was an autumnal landscape with changing colours & figures, every variation a new character - when was it, '56? what palpable richness of sound in the playing. Then I followed up with the Arrau (Ermitage): better sound recording, less colouristic but stunning control of dynamics and voice-leading. This interpretation suggests to me a modernist dream of the baroque - the rococo dolls around 20' are just perfect. I finished with Petri (Naxos): despite unrewarding sound the way he lofts this performance gave me great pleasure and the sense that it was he who gave us the Brahms style for the modern age, perhaps via Busoni? Only then did I realise I had another Ermitage CD with Rudolf Serkin playing the variations in '57 - but saved that for another day. I had to chill out with some Piazzola in the fading afternoon sun & a cup of orange-scented tea.

[Air]

Mandryka, where does Katchen's PVs rank for you among the aforementioned?  He seems to take a virtuosic approach, but in a different sense than Michelangeli (my current favorite).

[Mandryka]

Mandryka, where does Katchen's PVs rank for you among the aforementioned?  He seems to take a virtuosic approach, but in a different sense than Michelangeli (my current favorite).

Lots of people like Katchen's Brahms, and I can see that he's very good. It's that there are pianists who I prefer slightly. You know, I rarely play his PVs: maybe I should. Maybe he will grow on me.

The Paganini Variations is my favourite Brahms.

Brahms gave an interview to Arthur M. Abell in Berlin in December 1891 in which he said: 

"I have no patience with pianists who growl because of a few new difficulties. Shall progress stop because of a few hard nuts to crack? All my life I have been deeply interested in piano technique and I have endeavoured in my piano pieces to combine good musical ideas with new piano idioms. You will find this new technique particularly in my "Paganini Variations" and in my Capricci. I admit that many of the passages lie awkwardly for the hands. This new kind of technique seems at first inconvenient ("unbequem") because arms, hands and fingers are used in a new way. This new idiom requires greater strength, freedom and independence of fingers than the traditional, classical piano technique. But this is no reason why my innovations should be called unpianistic ("unclaviermassig"). I know that there are some very mean passages in the Paganini Variations but my original intention when I wrote them in 1866 was that they should be for technical exercises for practice only. It was not until later, when urged by Tausig, Bulow and Clara Schumann that I decided to have them published as concert pieces. I consider my "Handel Variations" more important musically than the "Paganini Variations".  (First printed:  December 1931 Etude . )

Just shows how wrong a composer can be about his own music. I was surprised that Brahms was so clear about the musical superority of the Handel Variations, but I haven't studied the music.

It would be interesting to know what the musicologists and performers here think.

Gosh  . . . tea.

LOL

There's a sort of whimsy about some of Gieseking's Brahms which I like -- in Op 118/5.

I saw Fleisher here in London a couple of years ago, but the only Brahms he played was the transcription for the Left Hand of the Bach Chaconne.

[Verena]

Possibly the single best Intermezzo recording I know is from Neuhaus on youtube. Unfortunately the rest of his Brahms on CD isn't quite up to this high standard.

I have that Intermezzo from Neuhaus on CD, it's really beautiful.

[SonicMan46]

Bill - I went through this process a few years ago - had a couple of CDs of Brahms solo piano works (mentioned already here), but wanted a more 'complete' package, so I bought the Katchen set, and was generally pleased - the recordings date mainly from the 1960s; the reviews were mostly favorable (including comments from this forum at the time) - still have a Goode disc, but would be willing to hear others - thus, will be quite interested in this thread - Dave 

 

BOY - this is a SLOW thread for such wonderful music! 

Since my post 2 1/2 yrs ago - WOW!  I've added an additional 'box set' from Brilliant w/ multiple pianists (image added above) - great price for the number of discs offered - possibly another option for consideration here?