Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

[Renfield]

It's nice to have a fellow Karajan-believer on the forum! I think there are  more of them than just us, though 

Yes. Though I do take exception to the hero-worship. I admire Karajan and his work, I do not worship him. There are a lot of good conductors, and only in very few works do I consider Karajan unmatched; but that is not to say I easily consider him surpassed, either.

[BachQ]

Levine / Kissin / BSO / Brahms Sym 3 & PC #2, op. 83



Levine led a richly textured and surely paced account of Brahms's Third Symphony, if not with the same rhetorical cogency and overarching expressive tension that he has brought to other Brahms symphonies in recent memory. Tuning in the winds and brass was also intermittently fuzzier than usual. The outer movements had a strong rhythmic profile and an appealing heft; the strings exuded the beautifully dark and warm tone that has become a signature of the orchestra's Brahms.

After intermission, Kissin gave a commanding, steel-fingered rendition of the Second Concerto, full of tightly coiled energy and explosive runs. His nimble, spry, and highly virtuosic playing seemed most closely attuned to the work's declarative and heroic qualities, and less so to its elusive crosscurrents or its hidden pockets of lyricism, though there were some moments when he lightened up to produce a beautifully liquid tone. Overall, his performance was the sort that grabs you by the lapel to demand your attention, rather than the sort that more memorably charms you into drawing near.

The piece itself is of course symphonic in its dimensions and the orchestra here was in excellent form. Most notable was Jules Eskin's golden-hued cello solo in the andante movement, a fountain of tone originating from somewhere deep.

[BachQ]

Peter Serkin Play Brahms's Variations & Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24



New York Times

April 7, 2008
Music Review | Peter Serkin
Bird Song, Modernism and Brahms Take Flight
By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

The pianist Peter Serkin does not like being described as a champion of contemporary music. As he has said, his excitement for new music is a natural extension of his excitement for all music. He enjoys presenting programs that intriguingly juxtapose the old and the new, as his recital on Saturday night at the 92nd Street Y excitingly demonstrated.

He began with a Renaissance vocal motet by Josquin, "Ave Christe," reset for piano in 1988 by the composer Charles Wuorinen. This austerely beautiful piece is thick with slow-moving contrapuntal lines. Yet every detail came through in Mr. Serkin's calmly assured performance. At times Josquin's wide-spaced harmonies seemed like premonitions of mystical passages from the late Beethoven piano sonatas.

Mr. Serkin's performance had the effect of inviting the audience into a contemplative state, a mood sustained throughout the next work, Messiaen's "Petites Esquisses d'Oiseaux," though the music could not have been more different. Messiaen's lifelong fascination with bird song is captured in this 15-minute suite from 1985, a fantastical portrait of a robin, blackbird, song thrush and skylark. The exuberant and rippling music is full of literal transcriptions of skittish bird calls, punctuated by outbursts of keyboard-spanning arpeggios and pungent chords that sound like depictions of flocks of birds taking frenzied flight.

After this Mr. Serkin took the audience back into a pensive state with Brahms's Theme and Variations in D minor, his transcription of the slow movement from his early Sextet for Strings in B flat. In its contrapuntal severity the music looked back to Bach, but in its wayward harmonies it hinted at the path-breaking Brahms to come in later years.

Somehow these pieces set the ideal mood for the premiere of Mr. Wuorinen's Scherzo for Piano, a 92nd Street Y commission. After the intensity of the Josquin and Brahms the audience needed to let loose, and Mr. Serkin's exhilarating performance of this dazzling, 10-minute tour de force gave listeners the chance to do so. Mr. Wuorinen is a formidably complex composer. But like many of his scores, this one crackles with viscerally exciting activity.

After the stern opening, when a six-note motive is bluntly stated, the piece becomes a frenetic, perpetual-motion fantasy. Yet, amid the spiraling flights and blasts of jerky chords, a halting thematic line threads through the textures. Mr. Serkin played the piece with uncanny clarity and wondrous colorings. When the composer took the stage for a bow, he was greeted more by whoops than bravos, which seemed right.

After intermission Mr. Serkin gave an unusually thoughtful account of Brahms's Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel in B flat, a virtuosic work often milked for showiness. He emphasized the contrasts in the variations, as Brahms turns Handel's fussily ornamented Baroque tune into a Gypsy dance, a rigorous canon, a siciliano and whatnot. During the ethereal variation in G minor Mr. Serkin played as if channeling the music from another realm. Yet the propulsive variations were jolted with steely fortissimo chords. The fugue built inexorably to a cascade of octaves and chords in its triumphant final moments.

[BachQ]

An All-Brahms Program, Both Passionate and Poised



New York Times

Brahms, an intensely self-critical composer who destroyed many of his works before publication, described his Clarinet Trio in A minor and Clarinet Quintet in B minor as "twin pieces of foolishness." The many Brahms bashers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries perhaps agreed.

But it's hard to imagine disliking the magnificent quintet, which the Emerson String Quartet and the clarinetist David Shifrin eloquently performed at the Rose Theater on Sunday afternoon, the second all-Brahms concert the Emerson has given this season.

Brahms was inspired to abandon plans for retirement after hearing the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld perform (among others) Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. It influenced the form of Brahms's own quintet, which also has an expansive opening movement and a theme-and-variations finale. Mr. Shifrin played the rhapsodic clarinet part with soulful flair and a clear tone, while the Emerson performed with an unsentimental elegance that was restrained in the autumnal nostalgia of the first movement and passionate in the concluding con moto. The cellist David Finckel and the violist Lawrence Dutton sounded particularly fine throughout the afternoon.

The program opened with the Quartet No. 3 in B flat, written in 1875 during a happy summer the composer spent at the riverside suburb of the university town of Heidelberg. The quartet is distinguished from its two sterner predecessors by its more genial and lyrical character, although those qualities weren't always illuminated in this performance, which at times seemed rather dry, with a sluggish final movement.

The Emerson was joined by the violist Paul Neubauer and the cellist Colin Carr for a lively rendition of the Sextet No. 1 in B flat. Written early in Brahms's career after a tumultuous period living in Clara Schumann's house, the work's poise in no way reflects the circumstances of its creation.

Mr. Finckel's voluminous tone was aptly complemented by Mr. Carr and the violas during the opening melody, which Brahms assigned to the lower strings on the advice of the violinist Joseph Joachim. The Emerson and colleagues offered a richly hued interpretation, with a colorful scherzo, stirring Andante and graceful Rondo.

[BachQ]

horowitz toscanini live brahms concerto #1 mvt1pt1 1935

mvt 1 pt 1 http://www.youtube.com/v/pfq4-Il4-dk

mvt 1 pt 2 http://www.youtube.com/v/KspFtrFHXOA


Clocking in at a mere 17 minutes, this is perhaps THE speediest 1st movement of PC 1 on record ........

[M forever]

Levine / Kissin / BSO / Brahms Sym 3 & PC #2, op. 83

I didn't get to go to that because I was too busy, and now I am in New York. Tonight, they had the NYP with Lang Lang playing a piano concerto by Tan Dun which might have been interesting to hear (I played a cello concerto by Tan Dun based on his music for "Hidden Tiger, Crouching Draon" with my orchestra once, and that was quite fun) but I thought it might be too painful to have to watch Lang Lang have a spastic attack on the podium, and they also played the Firebird conducted bt Slatkin, and that didn't really interest me, so I didn't make an effort to go.

But Karl Henning went to above Brahms concert, maybe he will tell you what it was like.

[BachQ]

Brahms D Minor Violin Sonata
Richter & Oistrakh - Brahms Sonata No.3 : IV. Presto Agitato

presto http://www.youtube.com/v/uRS5ye9_2i0




Brahms D Minor Violin Sonata
violin: Itzhak Perlman
piano: Daniel Barenboim

Allegro http://www.youtube.com/v/CR3h78Il5E4

Presto http://www.youtube.com/v/XykEvcfsrpI&feature=related

[greg]

Clocking in at a mere 17 minutes, this is perhaps THE speediest 1st movement of PC 1 on record ........

wow, that's pretty fast stuff.....

[BachQ]

Josef Suk (violin)
Rudolf Firkusny (piano)
Brahms: Sonata No. 3 for Piano in D Minor, Op. 108
(Second movement - Adagio)

http://www.youtube.com/v/djB1Iqu0wUs

[val]

Regarding the 3rd violin Sonata, I believe that no one reached the quality of David Oistrakh with Yampolski. The sound of Oistrakh, his eloquence, even the passion, are extraordinary. And Yampolski is a good partner.

Last night I heard again the string Quintet opus 88 buy the Amadeus Quartet with Aronowitz. The opus 88 is one of the most beautiful inspirations of Brahms, in special the first movement. And the Amadeus are perfect.

I also listened to the Juilliard with Trämpler in the same work and they seem heavy and prosaic compared to the Amadeus: the phrasing of the sublime 2nd theme of the first movement in the viola is a good example.

[BachQ]

Brahms, Symphony No. 1 in C minor Op. 68
Los Angeles Philharmonic / Carlo Maria Giulini / Deutsche Grammophon- 410 023 2(CD)





*** The broadly phrased first-movement introduction conveys extraordinary power and tension, while the conductor's astute attention to orchestral balance and accurate note values imparts a genuinely forward-moving impetus and inner rhythm that justifies his moderate interpretation of Brahms' Allegro directive, as well as his observing the long exposition repeat. Here and throughout the symphony the composer's espressivo passages elicit ritards and other tempo modifications that Giulini doles out in careful proportions.  ***

The final movement especially showcases the Los Angeles Philharmonic's uniformly beautiful, dynamically contrasted, committed playing, from the marvelously varied string sonorities (yes, even in the tricky pizzicato accelerandos) to the magnificent, full-throated brass playing in the coda. Integrity, passion, and deep musical intelligence define this classic, splendidly engineered Brahms First, which unquestionably surpasses Giulini's enervated remake with the Vienna Philharmonic (also on DG). Kudos to Arkivmusic.com's on-demand CD reissue program for making it available again.


--Jed Distler

[M forever]

Brahms, Symphony No. 1 in C minor Op. 68
Los Angeles Philharmonic / Carlo Maria Giulini / Deutsche Grammophon- 410 023 2(CD)





*** The broadly phrased first-movement introduction conveys extraordinary power and tension, while the conductor's astute attention to orchestral balance and accurate note values imparts a genuinely forward-moving impetus and inner rhythm that justifies his moderate interpretation of Brahms' Allegro directive, as well as his observing the long exposition repeat. Here and throughout the symphony the composer's espressivo passages elicit ritards and other tempo modifications that Giulini doles out in careful proportions.  ***

The final movement especially showcases the Los Angeles Philharmonic's uniformly beautiful, dynamically contrasted, committed playing, from the marvelously varied string sonorities (yes, even in the tricky pizzicato accelerandos) to the magnificent, full-throated brass playing in the coda. Integrity, passion, and deep musical intelligence define this classic, splendidly engineered Brahms First, which unquestionably surpasses Giulini's enervated remake with the Vienna Philharmonic (also on DG). Kudos to Arkivmusic.com's on-demand CD reissue program for making it available again.


--Jed Distler

Again, a very good recording from Giulini and the LAP, and funny how, once again, the American cultural inferiority complex has to come through at the end - but what else can you expect from the idiots who write for "classicstoday"? But again, as with the 2nd, that shouldn't deter people from enjoying this great recording, as well as Giulini's later recording with the WP which is another monument to this extraordinary conductor's art and which has nuances in the playing and tonal production which most other orchestras - including the LAP in its best days - can only dream of. That doesn't diminish the quality of this particular recording, seen by itself, though. But the sound is not "10". It is nice, warm and compact, but also rather dry and boxy - but still quite listenable.

[val]

M forever
Again, a very good recording from Giulini and the LAP.

This version is very good, but I prefer the former version of the four Symphonies that Giulini recorded with the Philharmonia Orchestra. More dynamic, more powerful, the articulation being much more clear. The 2nd and 3rd in special are extraordinary.

[M forever]

I wasn't aware actually that Giulini recorded a complete Brahms cycle with the Philharmonia for EMI. I only knew of the 4th with the CSO. Those earlier recordings seem to be hard to find - all could find online was an OOP edition of 2 and 3 from EMI France, but no copies are available on either amazon.de or .fr at this time 

[BachQ]

Brahms-Symphony n.4-Bernstein


http://www.youtube.com/v/aA1-mc7IEYM

http://www.youtube.com/v/T9q_v_oXGBs&feature=related

[BachQ]

April 16, 2008
Music Review
Variations on the Violin, All in the Key of Brahms
By BERNARD HOLLAND




For Anne-Sophie Mutter the saying "Make every note count" becomes less a vague cliché and more a matter of fact. Her violin playing has an imagination, a curiosity and a near-endless reserve of psychic energy that made each phrase of her all-Brahms program with Lambert Orkis at Carnegie Hall on Monday an adventure and a discovery.

How to use vibrato (or how not), how to reduce music to a whisper and still make it heard, how to alter speeds in ways that are both dramatic and logical — all these set this German violinist on a plane above most colleagues. Always an interesting musician, Ms. Mutter becomes more of one every year. Monday's concert marked her 20th year of visits to Carnegie Hall.

In principle, the Isaac Stern Auditorium, with its 2,800 seats, is too big for a violin and piano recital. Making an event like this intimate was too much to ask, but after a few minutes of adjustment, listeners did begin to feel themselves in a smaller space. Neither volume nor timbre could explain the effect; more likely was a certain enlightened intensity, something more sensed than directly heard.

Intimacy makes these three duo sonatas work. The Presto agitato finale of the D minor Sonata shows that Brahms in middle age was still not through with fierce, thick and violently difficult piano writing. Elsewhere in the piece and in the Sonatas in A and G played earlier in the evening, tenderness and quiet reflection become less battlefield lulls than guiding tendencies.

Listening to Mr. Orkis play Brahms's demanding music made it easy to understand why Ms. Mutter has been so faithful to their partnership. He commands this music, but it also excites him, and consequently us.

[BachQ]

Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 1,Op. 15. Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No 2,Op. 83. 3 Pieces,Op. 117. 4 Pieces,Op. 119. 2 Rhapsodies,Op. 79.
Emanuel Ax pf
Boston Symphony Orchestra; Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Bernard Haitink; James Levine
Sony Classical Reissue CD     8869703510-2



Review from Grammophon

Remastered Brahms reveals the fire burning in Ax's concertos

Ivan March's original 1986 review of the Ax/Levine Brahms D minor claimed the pianist to be "clearly happiest in the work's reflective pages", while finding the first movement's thrust "somewhat muted". Ahem: the Chicago Symphony's full-throated brass? Their vibrant, shapely strings? Ax's bottom-up tonal solidity? His fire-in-the-belly trills and powerful scale passages? "Muted" my foot! Yes, the piano tone is a tad monochrome and bloomless, but that's RCA's early digital technology talking. Still, it's obvious that the Levine/Chicago/Brahms trifecta was something special (let's hope their Brahms symphony cycle will turn up again).

Contrary to Richard Osborne's B flat Concerto observations, I find nothing "mannered" about Ax's expansive, purposefully inflected opening cadenza, although the "cloudy" quality RO infers in the sound may have to do with Haitink's generalised though superficially beautiful blending of orchestral strands (his Concertgebouw traversal with Arrau reveals a higher degree of textural differentiation and linear projection). Ax brings power, forward momentum and steadfast security to the Scherzo's most gnarly sequences, and takes plenty of time to savour the Andante's softly rising melodies without overindulging in the least. The solo numbers showcase Ax's big-hearted, musicianly pianism at its acme.

It's anyone's guess as to why Op 119's first three pieces are on one disc, with No 4 on the other. Had all four been grouped together, disc one still would have three minutes to spare. Ax's booklet-notes offer salient background information and disarming personal anecdotes about the music.
 
Jed Distler

[max]

Well now we know for sure that Brahms is inferior to Beethoven. He's only got 15 pages compared to 42

[BachQ]

Well now we know for sure that Brahms is inferior to Beethoven. He's only got 15 pages compared to 42

Brahms is only about 1/3 as good as Beethoven .......

[BachQ]

Berlin Philharmonic unveils the new season   
April 23 2008      
   
Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker announced their 2008-9 season at a press conference in Berlin on Tuesday. The orchestra will give 125 symphonic concerts and six opera performances during the season, 91 of which will be at the orchestra's home, the Philharmonie. Rattle himself will conduct 57 concerts with the BPO. 

Following the current season's dual focus on two composers (the music of Webern has been juxtaposed with the Beethoven symphonies), the 2008-9 season's focus will be on the music of Bernd Alois Zimmermann alongside orchestral and choral music by Robert Schumann. Rattle will conduct Zimmermann's Symphony in One Movement for Orchestra and guest conductors will perform Alagoana (Caprichos Brasileiros), Photoptosis, Requiem for a Young Poet and the Violin Concerto. The Schumann works will include Das Paradies und die Peri, the Konzertstück for Four Horns and Orchestra, the Piano Concerto and the Fourth Symphony – all to be conducted by Rattle. Sakari Oramo will conduct the Violin Concerto and the Second Symphony and Heinz Holliger will take charge of the Fantasy for violin and the First Symphony. A first for the orchestra will be a pair of concerts in the vast space of Hanger 2 at Tempelhoff Airport, the airport of the former East Berlin. Stockhausen's Gruppen will be paired with Messiaen's Et expecto resurrectionem mortuorum – the huge space allowing the three orchestras to be placed around the audience with the percussion positioned up in the roof of the hanger.

The other 'core' focus will be on the orchestral music of Brahms: Rattle will conduct a cycle of the four symphonies and also take them on tour to Korea and Japan (and they will also be recorded by EMI). To open the season Rattle and the BPO will give concerts that combine the Prelude and Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphonie – they will not only perform this programme at home in Berlin but also at the BBC Proms, the Salzburg Festival and at Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool, the city where Rattle was born. Guest conductors in the new season are Harnoncourt (Haydn's Orlando Paladino), Barenboim, Boulez, Bychkov, Dudamel, Eötvös, Alan Gilbert, Haitink, Harding, Holliger, Mehta, Muti (returning after an interval of 17 years), Oramo, Ozawa, Petrenko, Trevor Pinnock (making his BPO debut), Thielemann, Welser-Möst and Zinman. The Berliner Philharmoniker's Pianist in Residence for the season is Mitsuko Uchida who appears as soloist with the orchestra as well as in chamber music and as Lieder accompanist. EMI Classics, which has an exclusive recording contract with Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker has three projects (in addition to the Brahms symphonies) scheduled for the coming months. In June there is a Stravinsky programme that links the three symphonies (Symphony of Psalms, Symphony in C and Symphony in Three Movements); in August Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique will be released in tandem with Le mort de Cléopâtre (with Susan Graham) and in September EMI will be recording Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges (with Magdalena Kozená, Annick Massis, Nathalie Stutzmann, José van Dam and Sophie Koch) and the suite from Ma mère l'oye (to be recorded live in concert). At the press conference in Berlin, Rattle spoke of his excitement at the range and depth of music on offer, and parried questions about the renewal of his contract which is due in 2009: speculation is rife about the relationship between orchestra and conductor though many members of the orchestra expressed their admiration for their music director. Judging by the response of the Berlin audience at the concert the previous night music-lovers in the city are in no doubt at all as to high quality of the partnership's music-making. James Jolly, Gramophone editor-in-chief