Late Brahms Piano Works -- that's Ops 116 - 119 mainly.

[Tonus Peregrinus]

Try Anderson, Goode, Perahia & Rösel...excluding your lists

for the warmth lovers, Ax

[George]

Rec me some good recordings of 118 and 119 that have coherent emotional trajectories through the sets. (I don't think 116 and 117 can be presented as unified works in the same way.) Ideally, performances that cannot be described with words like "autumnal warmth" "melancholy" "nostalgia" "Wilhelm Kempff"

I have:
Afanassiev, Boyde, Grimaud (Denon 1992) (118 only), Rittner

I don't have, but know:
Backhaus (Naxos 1936) (118 only), Grimaud (Erato 1996), Katchen, Kempff (DG 1964), Lupu

Maybe Lupu.

[North Star]

I recall liking Kovacevich a fair bit in 116-119, but it's a long time since I've heard the music. Rösel, too.

[Mandryka]

Rec me some good recordings of 118 and 119 that have coherent emotional trajectories through the sets. (I don't think 116 and 117 can be presented as unified works in the same way.) Ideally, performances that cannot be described with words like "autumnal warmth" "melancholy" "nostalgia" "Wilhelm Kempff"

Start with Yudina.

After that, if you still need more of this stuff, there's Gould, Pogorelich,  Sokolov, Antonin Kubalek (maybe more autumnal warmth than you want, I'd have to listen again and I don't want to), Hamelin, Leonskaja, Gilels.

I can't remember if Hamelin was very very good or very very bad, but he was very very something.

There's also a fabulous op 119 from Richter which was never released commercially. And then there's Schliessmann and Virssaladze, but I can't remember anything about either of them but I bet they have things to say.

[Jo498]

I admit that I hardly thought of them as "suites" with one trajectory. While I have not heard many recordings, I think Katchen is sometimes underrated. In any case he is much better than might be expected by "complete recording routine" and he is not autumnal or Kempff-like either.
All (late) Brahms by Rubinstein is very good but I don't think he played any of the late opuses complete.

[Dancing Divertimentian]

Ideally, performances that cannot be described with words like "autumnal warmth" "melancholy" "nostalgia" "Wilhelm Kempff"

Your descriptors in bold can be found in Brahms's music starting right from his op.1 piano sonata. He didn't shy away from any of these qualities no matter what the period of his life. Being a lifelong Brahms fan I've found that the idea that he hit his "autumnal" period only later in life doesn't hold much water.

So trying to dodge this in his music isn't likely to produce results. I can't imagine many performers willing to excise from the music what is inherently a vital part of it. It's music on its own terms or it's not music. Brahms may be a tough nut to crack (for some) but I'm doubtful of the success rate if the music is half choked-off.

I have:
Afanassiev, Boyde, Grimaud (Denon 1992) (118 only), Rittner

I don't have, but know:
Backhaus (Naxos 1936) (118 only), Grimaud (Erato 1996), Katchen, Kempff (DG 1964), Lupu

The fact that you have or "know" the above - and none of them apparently meet your criteria - should be proof enough that the music, well, is what it is. Of course that may not be what you want to hear, though.

That said, I've been most moved by this music by Goode, Lupu, Paik, Gilels, and Richter. Whether or not they're "un-Kempff" enough for you I couldn't say.
 

[bwv 1080]

aside from Katchen, Kempf and Rubenstein always been partial to this one:

[Holden]

Start with Yudina.

After that, if you still need more of this stuff, there's Gould, Pogorelich,  Sokolov, Antonin Kubalek (maybe more autumnal warmth than you want, I'd have to listen again and I don't want to), Hamelin, Leonskaja, Gilels.

I can't remember if Hamelin was very very good or very very bad, but he was very very something.

There's also a fabulous op 119 from Richter which was never released commercially. And then there's Schliessmann and Virssaladze, but I can't remember anything about either of them but I bet they have things to say.

After I heard the 2nd PC I wanted to hear Richter in more Brahms. Any idea where we can listen to the Richter Op 119?

[Mandryka]

You know, it would be interesting to know the origin of  the idea that these late pieces are inherently autumnal and nostalgic, rather than passionate and vigorous. The tradition of playing them in a strong way is pretty old - at least as old as Backhaus in 1936 and then there's Tiegemann and possibly others, I can't remember. I don't like autumnal performances much myself, I feel they deprive the music of its most vital element.

[Mandryka]

After I heard the 2nd PC I wanted to hear Richter in more Brahms. Any idea where we can listen to the Richter Op 119?

I'll send you something later.

[Jo498]

I am not equally familiar with all of them (an usually cannot remember the numbers). But the very last one, the "rhapsody" 119,4 was one of the first solo Brahms pieces I encountered and it has always struck me as one of the most obviously powerful and vigorous pieces I have heard.
Some others (the one with the "dies irae" like beginning) are way too dark to be "autumnal". Some are so serenely lyrical that I'd rather associate them with summer than autumn. But of course there are also "autumnal" ones. Whatever that means...

[amw]

I admit that I hardly thought of them as "suites" with one trajectory. While I have not heard many recordings, I think Katchen is sometimes underrated. In any case he is much better than might be expected by "complete recording routine" and he is not autumnal or Kempff-like either.

I can accept them as individual pieces, but I've become increasingly interested in the idea of a superstructure (they weren't written as units—but there had to be a reason Brahms chose certain individual pieces for certain sets, and put them in certain orders). I do really like Katchen's record of the late pieces. If they were available on their own I'd probably have them, as it is I stream them

So trying to dodge this in his music isn't likely to produce results. I can't imagine many performers willing to excise from the music what is inherently a vital part of it.

I don't think it is a vital part. 118/1 and 119/1 are certainly tinged with regret and melancholy no matter how you play them, 118/2 can also be done that way but is more contented and lyrical in nature, after that both cycles take very different paths.

The fact that you have or "know" the above - and none of them apparently meet your criteria

Some of them do. I liked Backhaus a lot, Rittner, the earlier Grimaud one, Katchen... even Afanassiev is interesting in an analytical sort of way iirc. Only one I really disliked was Kempff, which is why I put his name up there. (Bear in mind that I do not really buy music and rarely collect alternate recordings.) I made the list so people know what I've already heard when making recommendations >_>

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Short descriptions of each one might be helpful as well, rather than just lists.

[Mandryka]

I listened to some of Burkard Schliessmann's op 116 today, it's on spotify, really because this thread came up and because I got a lot of interesting things from his new recording of Chopin preludes, also on spotify. Anyway I think it's well worth catching, more so than his op 117, and it shows what rubbish the idea that autumnal nostalgia is a vital part is - that way of playing it seems to me to have done the reception of the music more harm than good in fact, reducing it to grandad stuff.

There's a "mystical" quality to the music sometimes, in the 116 intermezzo for example.  Sort of thing people find in late Beethoven but I hadn't noticed before in late Brahms. And a sort of psychological quality, hallucinatory, sort of thing I associate more with Chopin.

Some of them do. I liked Backhaus a lot,

That one from 1936(?) is so different from all his other Brahms recordings, it makes me wonder what he was on that night. And why he never took it again, it would have done his music making some good.

[Mandryka]

The most interesting performance of anything I've heard from op 119 is Yudina's op 119/2. SHe writes this about it -- and her performance is a good reflection of what she writes:

"VI. Meanwhile, in the e-moll Intermezzo Op. 119, No. 2, anxiety turns into trembling in the scheme and construction of the repeated fragile chords of the sixteenths. However, we hear a glimpse of hope also in this intermezzo in measures [36-71] in the E-dur episode. It sounds to us as an echo of German romantic music, its light yearning to the infinite. Inevitably we have to recall also Pushkin's

It's time, my friend, it's time! The peace is craved by hearts...
Days flow after days -- each hour departs
A bit of life ...
("It's time, my friend, ...", 1834).
[Translated by Ye. Bonver]

Nevertheless the E-dur fragment is relatively less significant, the music mostly glides, struggles, trembles in whisper, night's rustle, in darkness and unknown - we come to the theme of Tyutchev's "Day and Night" and "Twilight"

The hour of inexpressible yearning!
Everything is in me, and I am in everything!...
and to "Hymns to the Night" by Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg, an ingenious young man, who had a tremendous influence on the later romantic poetry and music as well), and we recall also Vyacheslav Ivanov, his marvelous poetic thoughts about the "eternal rotation", as in the fragments of his "Daybreak"

The sound of steps is majestic,!
And clatter of hooves in the darkness of night!!
And how hostile is the stare!
Of blind pre-morning rays!!
Everything, shaking, is suddenly heavy,!
Hurrying to burden and yoke,!
The free night soul!
Enters its daylight body!!
("Cor Ardens", I)!
However, he himself celebrated the Sun and Sun-Heart:

Oh, the Sun, guide, Angel of God!!
("Cor Ardens", I)!
Let us recall the liturgical text, at the end of the Vespers service:

Glory to you, who has shown us Light!

If both of these intermezzi have not found Light and have not resurrected with Him, then we, my reader and listener, as well are confounded and lost; night, fear, mystery, incomprehensible, shimmer of hope, and its crash.
-Where are we? Whom are we with?
We arrived with Brahms in both of these intermezzi to the bottom of one of the greatest Works of Art, "the tragedy of tragedies", to Shakespeare, to "Hamlet"."

The "both" refers to op 117/2, which she thinks is the soul sister of 119/2 -- both for her are full of anxiety.

Apart from Yudina I've heard a complete performance of op 119 from Richter, from Varese in the 1990s. Unpublished. It was remarkable for the way he made all four movements sound integrated, as if I was listening to a single four movement sonata. I can share the Richter performance with anyone who's interested.

[Mandryka]

Furtwangler wrote some very condemning things about late Brahms, or at least prima facie they sound condemning. He said that the stuff Brahms was writing in the 1890s is extremely old fashioned, he actually said it wasn't much different harmonically from Schubert's music from 70 years before. I don't know enough about music to say whether Furtwangler was right about that judgement. Maybe someone will comment.

Furtwangler rather disingenuously tries to rush to Brahms's defence with something I can't make head or tail of. He says: Brahms is the first great musician, in whose case historical meaning and meaning as an artistic personality no longer coincide: that this was so, was not his fault, but rather that of his epoch.

What does that mean?

These comments are taken from Furtwangler's essay "Brahms and the crisis of our times."

[Mandryka]

I am not equally familiar with all of them (an usually cannot remember the numbers). But the very last one, the "rhapsody" 119,4 was one of the first solo Brahms pieces I encountered and it has always struck me as one of the most obviously powerful and vigorous pieces I have heard.

When I first started to listen to Brahms I really hated op 119/4. I thought it was just hectoring and boisterous The first time I heard a performance which made me take that piece more seriously was when I came across the record Helene Grimaud made for Erato --she manages to find plenty of moody and brooding music in there, and the opening bars sound more noble than complacent. Since then I've found some others who I like in op 119/4, especially Van Cliburn and Myra  Hess, who are probably my favourites with it really, and a really jolly interpretation of it by Beveridge Webster on youtube. There's also the totally off the wall crazy one from Elly Ney., which has the fascination of watching a train wreck. Rudolph Serkin also managed to wreck it I think, but this time the result is less fascinating.

One extraordinary thing about it is that there's a record of it by Benno Moiseiwitsch. Quite why this ultra smooth silk-underpants pianist should have picked this as one of his two  pieces of late Brahms to record is a mystery to me. You can hear Moiseiwitsch try to capture a mood swing/schizoid quality - for you to decide whether the interpretation is successful. I think it's magnificent. Many pianists have avoided it, Maria Yudina and Glen Gould and Wilhelm Backhaus for example, at least as far as I know. Richter played it, but very rarely, while he played the op 119 intermezzi all through his career.

My favourite op 119 is the second.

Sometimes I wonder whether op 119 is experimental - a late experiment. Anyway, with 119/4 he said good bye to piano music with a bang!

[EigenUser]

When I first started to listen to Brahms I really hated op 119/4. I thought it was just hectoring and boisterous The first time I heard a performance which made me take that piece more seriously was when I came across the record Helene Grimaud made for Erato --she manages to find plenty of moody and brooding music in there, and the opening bars sound more noble than complacent. Since then I've found some others who I like in op 119/4, especially Van Cliburn and Myra  Hess, who are probably my favourites with it really, and a really jolly interpretation of it by Beveridge Webster on youtube. There's also the totally off the wall crazy one from Elly Ney., which has the fascination of watching a train wreck. Rudolph Serkin also managed to wreck it I think, but this time the result is less fascinating.

One extraordinary thing about it is that there's a record of it by Benno Moiseiwitsch. Quite why this ultra smooth silk-underpants pianist should have picked this as one of his two  pieces of late Brahms to record is a mystery to me. You can hear Moiseiwitsch try to capture a mood swing/schizoid quality - for you to decide whether the interpretation is successful. I think it's magnificent. Many pianists have avoided it, Maria Yudina and Glen Gould and Wilhelm Backhaus for example, at least as far as I know. Richter played it, but very rarely, while he played the op 119 intermezzi all through his career.

My favourite op 119 is the second.

Sometimes I wonder whether op 119 is experimental - a late experiment. Anyway, with 119/4 he said good bye to piano music with a bang!

Ahhh, I love the Rhapsody!!! Although I'm not sure why he called it a rhapsody. Sounds too stately and organized. Reminds me a bit of the Academic Festival Overture.

[Jo498]

I do not really understand the title either (but the op.79 rhapsodies are also very tightly organized, compared to e.g. Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies). It's an uncommonly heroic piece for Brahms, almost brutal at beginning and end. Like a defiant ending of the opus, although the heroic gestures of the beginnings are partly "dissolved" in the proceding.
Similar "defiance despite defeat" can be found in the codas of the outer movements of the 4th symphony (but without dissolving).

[Mandryka]

Amw - I think you should try Piet Kuijken's CD, it's on spotify, the instrument makes a big difference.  Kuijken has a strong personality. I'd forgotten how contrapuntally interesting the music is.

I've also been enjoying Schliessman - also on spotify.

[amw]

Haha I forgot I even posted in this thread wow. Cold medicine ;_;

I just listened to Piet Kuijken's Op. 116 and it's very good—slow, methodical and expressive. He's a bit less excitable and "Romantic" than Hardy Rittner whom I'm listening to now in the same piece(s), and makes a bit more unity out of them, though I don't feel the pieces are comparable to Op. 118 in that regard. I miss the last bit of intimacy in 116/5 (the E minor intermezzo, one of Brahms's most personal works) but 116/4 and especially 116/7 are splendid.

I really don't want another Sonata Op. 5 (have a few recordings already and don't even like it, but people keep putting it on albums with things I do like) so haven't bought, but even so it's worth having this as a contrast to Rittner, whose Brahms (in general) is vigourous and youthful, passionate, but maybe too fireworksy for some. Their instruments sound very different as well.

Not holding out for an 118/119 (or anything else much) as getting Piet to record anything is like herding cats—I only know of one other album, a Schumann double on Fuga Libera which is also very good and avoids any kind of showiness, whether in physical virtuosity or in emotional display. But if one does appear I won't hesitate as much as with this one >_>