BRAHMS Violin Concerto

"A CD offering less than 40 minutes of music these days is very short measure, but Mullova's is a commanding performance, pure and true throughout, made the more compelling by the spontaneous expressiveness that goes with a live performance. Her admirers need not hesitate, for with one minor reservation the recording is first-rate, and Abbado and the Berlin Philharmonic here match the Brahmsian achievement of their DG symphony cycle...The clarity of Mullova's articulation in the finale is phenomenal, the bravura most compelling...Mullova's new disc makes an excellent recommendation." --Gramophone [11/1994]

The surprise is that the recording, made at a concert in Japan in January 1992, has taken so long to arrive. Maybe they were waiting for a coupling, but in any case this is a one-off recording, supervised not by Philips's own engineers but by those at NHK, Japan. The reservation I mentioned is that though the sound in generally warm, well-balanced and well-detailed with a pleasant hall-atmosphere, the prominent placing of the timpani means that the many tremolos in the outer movements, notable at first, tend to cloud the texture. The effect is distracting enough to bring home afresh just how many such tremolos there are. Happily, the audience is extremely quiet, except in the brief gap between slow movement and finale.

The first obvious comparison is with Itzhak Perlman's live Berlin recording for EMI with Barenboim conducting this same orchestra. That was made two months after the present one but in the Schauspielhaus, Berlin with a sound-balance typical of Perlman's recordings, with the solo violin in close-up set against full-bodied orchestral sound. The immediate impact of the bravura double-stopping passages is obviously greater, but Mullova consistently compensates in the extra dynamic range that she can convey, with the many reflective passages in the first movement as well as the central Adagio given a rapt intensity.

The combination of purity and warmth go with a clear purposefulness, heightened by the degree of freedom Mullova allows herself in linking the different sections of each movement. Similarly, instead of storming through the thorny technical problems of the Joachim cadenza (curiously not identified in the booklet), she again allows herself a degree of elbow-room, giving it more than usual the feeling of a spontaneous improvisation, culminating in an exceptionally sweet and pure account of the coda, bringing the most inward meditation of all.

The violin entry in the Adagio is then open and songful, with full meditative intensity reserved for later in the movement. The clarity of Mullova's articulation in the finale is phenomenal, the bravura most compelling. . . . Mullova's new disc makes an excellent recommendation . . . .

-- Edward Greenfield, Gramophone [11/1994]

80th Birthday TRIBUTE

As Alfred Brendel celebrates his 80th birthday on 5 January 2011, Decca is marking this momentous occasion with FOUR major catalogue releases.

 

“Everything has its place yet nothing sounds contrived. Brendel is an intellectual but not, at the piano, a lecturer. He illuminates but never pontificates. Seldom has his capacity for symphonic synthesis found nobler or more stirring expression than in the present reading of the Brahms D minor Concerto...[The Mozart] had me wreathed in smiles of sheer delight.” --BBC Music Magazine, April 2011 *****

“Perhaps the biggest thrill is Brendel's Brahms First from 1985...Right from the thunderous opening timpani roll it packs a terrific punch...[Brendel's reading] never tr[ies] to lure the listener through sumptuousness of tone but instead offer[s] piercing intelligence and a sure-footed way through Brahms's mountainous landscape...[The Beethoven] is a reading of profound wisdom, pathos and tenderness that leaves you wishing for more.” --Gramophone Magazine, May 2011

“he is in absolute control throughout, technically flawless and with a characteristic clarity of texture. What especially distinguishes Brendel's interpretations is the way that the structure and the architecture of the work comes foremost...the playing [of Op. 110] is of unfailing beauty, with the final return to the tonic key a true apotheosis and a triumphant homecoming.” --International Record Review, March 2011

BRAHMS Works for Solo Piano, Volume 5

“Douglas continues to create provocative playlists by liberating short pieces from opus-number groups and strategically programming them alongside larger-scale compositions…a mixed bag laced with genuine pearls” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2015

“It’s a well thought-out and stylistically comprehensive survey, which throws an interesting, and conspicuously non-French perspective on a genre that came into its own in the 20th century.” --The Guardian, 25th September 2015 ****

This album is the penultimate in what BBC Music has described as a ‘triumph of Brahmsian thought’, namely the survey by Barry Douglas of the composer’s complete works for solo piano.
 Three years after the release of Volume 1, the winner of the 1986 Tchaikovsky Competition is now performing this repertoire in the finest international venues, such as the Wigmore Hall in July 2015 and Concertgebouw in 2016, when the series will come to a highly anticipated climax with the final volume. Taking a big step further in his career with this achievement, Barry Douglas is gaining a reputation of one of the few accomplished world-class piano virtuosi of the romantic repertoire.

This fifth volume is probably the most virtuosic to date, as it includes the transcendent Scherzo in E flat minor (among Brahms’s earliest surviving compositions), technically demanding variations (especially Book II of the famous Op. 35; see Volume 4 for Book I), as well as several intermezzi, strongly marked by Brahms’s love of metrical complications.

The album also features three tuneful Hungarian Dances, arranged by the composer for solo piano, repertoire new to Barry Douglas’s Brahms exploration.

BRAHMS & BARTÓK Violin Concertos

Long-awaited release of her debut recording of Brahms’s Violin Concerto

Innovative coupling with Bartók’s Violin Concerto No. 1.

“Jansen’s strong attack and rhythmic acuity created an engaging account of the gypsy-inspired finale, and she displayed exquisite delicacy and cantabile phrasing in her quietly impassioned reading of the slow movement.” - Concert review of Brahms’s Violin Concerto, Sydney, The Australian (March 2015)
Release date: 8th Jan 2016

BRAHMS Violin Sonatas Nos. 2 & 3

“[a] beautifully balanced performance, and the warmth and intimacy of the recording is an excellent match.” --CD Review, 5th September 2015

“Melnikov’s 1875 Bösendorfer piano sounds splendidly grainy, transparent and powerful, often overwhelming Faust’s gut-stringed violin in Brahms’s louder moments, but blending ideally in the elegiac slow movements.” --The Guardian, 27th September 2015 ***

“Enthralling, lovely performances.” --Gramophone Magazine, October 2015

BBC Music Magazine Chamber Choice - November 2015

“The first Brahms sonata recorded by Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov on period instruments made a big impression...Melnikov’s 1875 Bösendorfer piano sounds splendidly grainy, transparent and powerful, often overwhelming Faust’s gut-stringed violin in Brahms’s louder moments, but blending ideally in the elegiac slow movements.” --The Observer, 27th September 2015 ***

“Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov (playing an 1875 Bösendorfer) make a strong case for the work as a whole, though even their impassioned advocacy can’t quite save Dietrich’s opening movement from sounding long- winded. In Brahms’s Second and Third Violin Sonatas, the players’ sound world may be a little too muscularly lean for some tastes. Still, the musical argument is always lucid.” --Irish Times, 21st October 2015

SCHUMANN, SCHUBERT & BRAHMS Piano music

“With her warm, flexible tone, Lise Berthaud gives a performance of enormous expressive range and tosses off the more showy passages with virtuoso panache...All in all, it's a wonderfully played recital, drawing the listener into the world of each composer.” --Gramophone Magazine, February 2014

“The voice of the ‘middle finger’ (according to Percy Grainger) has rarely been heard to better advantage than on Lise Berthaud and Adam Laloum’s programme of Brahms, Schubert and Schumann. Berthaud’s warm, flexible tone is a joy to hear, and she and Laloum pass on a strong involvement with the emotions of all three works.”  --Gramophone December 2014

Lise Berthaud (viola) & Adam Laloum (piano)

Lise Berthaud [b.1982] studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, with Gérard Caussé. In 2005, she won the Hindemith Prize at the Geneva International Competition, was short listed by the Victoires de la Musique Classique 2009 as 'Révélation de l’Année' (Newcomer of the Year) and since September 2013, Lise has been part of the prestigious BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists scheme.

Adam Laloum studied at the Paris Conservatoire before receiving international recognition when he won 1st Prize at the prestigious Clara Haskil Piano Competition. Laloum has founded a piano trio 'Les Esprits'. Both have played with prestigious orchestras and have appeared on famous stages and festivals. This is their first recital together and Lise Berthaud's debut recording.

BRAHMS Works for Solo Piano Volume 4

“Douglas achieves a magnificently orchestral textures. This is big, broad-boned playing of a high order: powerful but never noisy; grand but never grandiose; texturally lucid and tonally rich.” --BBC Music Magazine, August 2015 ****

“Douglas comes fully alive throughout the C major Sonata. His proportioned rubatos in the first movement's second theme and broodingly sustained Andante imbue the unwieldy textures with colour and variety.” --Gramophone Magazine, May 2015

Barry Douglas (piano)

This is Volume 4 in Barry Douglas’s monumental project to record the complete works for solo piano by Johannes Brahms. Each volume has been released to critical acclaim, the first one, in 2012, being seen by BBC Music as ‘a triumph of Brahmsian thought, with playing that gets right to the heart of the composer’.

Once again, the album is presented as a stand-alone recital, prominently featuring the C major Sonata, which was Brahms’s first published work. The influence on Brahms of his early romantic predecessors Beethoven and Schubert is obvious here, not only in the virtuoso demands on the performer but also in the opening, which recalls both Beethoven’s ‘Hammerklavier’ Sonata, Op. 106 and Schubert’s ‘Wanderer’ Fantasy.

Two other works are much more than simple sets of variations. The Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann highlight the close relationship of Brahms with Schumann and his wife, Clara, to whom the work is dedicated ‘with intimate reverence’, and demonstrate Brahms’s skill at ‘thematic actualisation’, whereby latent potentialities of a theme are gradually revealed throughout the variation process. In the Variations on a Theme by Niccolò Paganini – the first of two books originally published in 1866 as ‘Keyboard Studies’ – each variation explores a distinct figural pattern or keyboard technique.

The recording also features short keyboard character pieces, abundant in the second half of the nineteenth century and especially in Brahms’s later years.