Brahms, Johannes

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    Review: Daniel Barenboim Misses His American Swan Song

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    The ailing conductor was to have led the Staatskapelle Berlin in Brahms’s symphonies at Carnegie Hall. Yannick Nézet-Séguin jumped in.On Jan. 20, 1957, a 14-year-old pianist named Daniel Barenboim made his Carnegie Hall debut, playing a Prokofiev concerto. In 1968, just 25, he appeared at the hall for the first time as a conductor.Some 150 Carnegie performances later, Barenboim, now 81 and one of the great musical figures of our time, was to have returned this week to conduct the Staatskapelle Berlin in Brahms’s four symphonies over two evenings, Thursday and Friday.But earlier this year, health issues forced him from the Staatskapelle’s podium, where he had reigned since the early 1990s. And while he had still hoped to travel to Carnegie with the orchestra as part of a four-city North American tour, those health problems ended up making the trip impossible. It would have been a poignant American swan song for Barenboim, bringing him not just to Carnegie but also to Chicago, where he led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 1991 to 2006.In September, Christian Thielemann, 64, a master of Austro-German classics like Brahms’s symphonies, was named Barenboim’s replacement at the Staatskapelle, which is also the pit orchestra of the Berlin State Opera. But Thielemann couldn’t take on the tour.Instead, the ensemble looked to younger conductors: Giedre Slekyte for a performance in Toronto; Jakub Hrusa in Chicago; and, in New York and Philadelphia, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the music director of the Metropolitan Opera (where he’s currently leading “Florencia en el Amazonas”) and the Philadelphia Orchestra.Nézet-Séguin has been Carnegie’s omnipresent man of late, appearing at the hall two dozen times since fall 2021 alone. And he’s been a dependable luxury substitute there, having jumped in for three dates with the Vienna Philharmonic at the dawn of the Russian war in Ukraine last year, when Valery Gergiev was forced off the programs under pressure.This was a shotgun wedding — “spontaneous,” as Nézet-Séguin put it in remarks from the podium at the end of the first Staatskapelle concert on Thursday, thanking the orchestra and sending good wishes to Barenboim. Nézet-Séguin hadn’t led the ensemble in 10 years, and it felt that way: sometimes excitingly volatile, sometimes unsettled.Brahms’s first and second symphonies were featured on the program, with the third and fourth to follow on Friday and in Philadelphia on Sunday. This orchestra is experienced in balancing Brahms’s winding, saturnine lines with his restless energy; the violins irradiate these scores, with a sound under pressure that’s slicing and white hot but never harsh.In the First Symphony, Nézet-Séguin nudged the ensemble toward slower slows and faster fasts, with high-wire, occasionally vague or nervous transitions between sections in the first movement. In the second movement, the strings glowed as they surrounded the wind solos. And while the soft initial statement of the brass chorale in the finale was seductively transparent, with each instrument’s layer audible in the sedimentary whole, that chorale’s restatement at the end was breathlessly sped through.The brighter-spirited Second Symphony felt more comfortably lived in, with a glistening, lightly frosted, even dreamlike sound in the first movement. The opening of the second was lovingly conducted, with a modest dignity to the theme and vigor in the rest.It would have been meaningful to be able to show our gratitude to Barenboim this week: for all the performances, for all the recordings, for all the sense he has conveyed that classical musicians can and should be vital parts of civic life.His albums, of course, will remain with us. Hopefully, so will the institutions he founded, like the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, a project he conceived with Edward Said and dedicated to breaking down barriers in the Middle East.We in New York are left thinking back to what will likely end up being his final Carnegie appearances: a triumphant Bruckner cycle with the Staatskapelle in 2017, nine concerts in which he paired those sprawling symphonies with Mozart piano concertos, conducted from the keyboard. This was the king in full, thrilling command, the way he would want to be remembered.Staatskapelle BerlinThe orchestra will play Brahms at Carnegie Hall in Manhattan on Friday and at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia on Sunday; philorch.org. More

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      Review: Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra Gets Ambitious at Carnegie Hall

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      After decades away, the musicians, led by Kent Nagano, were back in the United States to perform works by Sean Shepherd, along with Beethoven and Brahms.“Go big or go home” must have been the rallying cry for the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra’s debut at Carnegie Hall Saturday night. The last time this group appeared in the United States was more than 50 years ago, in 1967. So for this program, the Hamburg musicians, led by the conductor Kent Nagano, went large-scale ambitious, performing the world premiere of the American composer Sean Shepherd’s t12- movement “An Einem Klaren Tag — On a Clear Day” for cello, choruses and orchestra.Here, that ambition demanded the participation of no fewer than five choruses culled from both Germany and New York: the Audi Jugendchorakademie (a youth chorus sponsored by the car manufacturer); Alsterspatzen (the children and youth choir of the Hamburg State Opera); the Dresdner Kreuzchor (a boys’ choir that dates back to the 13th century); the Young ClassX ensemble (a youth choir from Hamburg); and the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus. By my count, more than 200 instrumentalists and singers were jammed onto the Carnegie stage, plus Nagano and the soloist Jan Vogler on cello, for the nearly hourlong work.The concert began with the music of a Hamburg native: Johannes Brahms. The orchestra performed his brief, sonically luminous and emotionally ambiguous “Schicksalslied” (Song of Destiny) with the Audi singers. Written in three movements with an ancient Greek-inspired text by Friedrich Hölderlin, “Schicksalslied” descends from radiant joyfulness into dark despair before resolving into something akin to solace. Nagano, deeply mindful of shape and phrasing, coaxed the strings into producing a warm glow that seemed to be lit from within.Nagano and the orchestra continued that careful, deeply intentional sculpting of rhythm, articulation and dynamics in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 8. In a work full of lithe charm, the Hamburg musicians, who also serve as the orchestra of the Hamburg State Opera, were able to showcase a more exuberantly playful side of their collective personality. After all, this is a symphony in which Beethoven, for all his callbacks to the structure and style of Haydn and Mozart, takes a radical tack: the Eighth lacks a slow movement, and dances at its own singular pace. Even with that whimsical spirit, the musicians created each moment with great deliberation.That pinpoint precision subsided in the sweep of Shepherd’s massive and earnest piece. Mostly using poetry by the German writer Ulla Hahn, Shepherd calls “On a Clear Day” both “a plea for compassion toward our fellow human” and an outcry against environmental calamity. Despite Vogler’s presence, it’s not a concerto per se; rather, Shepherd used the cello more as an actor who steps into a variety of roles to present occasional plaintive and virtuosic soliloquies against a colossal backdrop: here, a melancholic companion for the singers, trading a melody back and forth; there, channeling the spirit of a beleaguered Mother Earth.Shepherd has a fantastic gift for orchestral color; for example, in the sixth movement, he juxtaposes a rapturous, lyrical passage for solo cello with winds, brass, harp, piano and percussion — including glockenspiel and sleigh bells — to glittering, mysterious effect. The piece is so expansive in both size and scope, however, that it sometimes felt like Nagano was less a conductor than the captain of a giant cruise ship, wrestling his oversized vessel into a modest port. The even keel at which he had led the Brahms and Beethoven had vanished.Hamburg Philharmonic State OrchestraPerformed on Saturday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan; carnegiehall.org. More

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      The Vienna Philharmonic Tends the Classics With a Perfect Partner

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      Christian Thielemann led the storied orchestra in three concerts at Carnegie Hall, including a revelatory performance of Strauss’s “An Alpine Symphony.”Sometimes in a concert-going life, preconceived notions are upended, leading to thrilling surprises.Before the Vienna Philharmonic’s three concerts over the weekend at Carnegie Hall, I was primed for this storied orchestra’s dashing Mendelssohn, formidable Brahms and majestic Bruckner.But I had been prepared to reach those works, on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, after the hurdle of Strauss’s “An Alpine Symphony” on Friday.“An Alpine Symphony” is something of an ugly duckling in the orchestral repertory — or, given its scale, an ugly elephant. Lasting some 50 minutes, it is Strauss’s final and biggest tone poem, a wall mural in sound depicting a dramatic mountain hike, and requiring both celesta and organ, wind and thunder machines — and cowbell for good measure — as well as woodwind and brass forces that put even Bruckner to shame.The piece gets a bad rap for its indulgent size and fitfully episodic structure, the way it can seem to be spinning its wheels for long stretches between bloated climaxes. It’s considered more than acceptable for people who know a lot about classical music — people who are in classical music — to roll their eyes at it.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.And it’s true: From most orchestras, under most conductors, on most nights, it comes off bombastic, limp and long.Not here. On the podium for the three concerts this weekend was Christian Thielemann, a maestro whose Strauss is able to convert even skeptics. People still talk about the focused splendor he brought to another huge, hard-to-wrangle Strauss score, “Die Frau Ohne Schatten,” at the Metropolitan Opera more than 20 years ago.Now 63, Thielemann spends much of his career in the German-speaking world, focusing on a tiny group of eminent ensembles like this one and a small circle of canonical scores. In recent years, he has been almost absent from New York stages; his last visit to Carnegie Hall, with his Staatskapelle Dresden, was in 2013.Believe the hype: Thielemann, whose last appearance at Carnegie Hall was in 2013, gave an enlightening account of Strauss’s “An Alpine Symphony” on Friday.Jennifer TaylorOn Friday, his “Alpine Symphony” was a reminder that the fuss that surrounds him is not hype. Above all, Thielemann conveyed a sense of unaffected fluidity — achieved, paradoxically, by firm control over a score that can sag.The soft but grand dawn opening felt not portentous but natural, building to a sunrise that was shining without blare. Throughout, Thielemann refused to dwell on the climaxes, be they mountaintop vistas or thundering storms, blurring the boundaries between the episodes into an ever-shifting, gorgeously disorienting whole.Sometimes sumptuous, sometimes frosty, sometimes glistening, Vienna’s strings were perhaps at their most impressive when it came to maintaining tension even as a barely audible foundation of the orchestral textures. This helped ensure that material that often feels like filler was continually mesmerizing.More relaxed passages had the poised intimacy of Strauss’s salon-style opera “Ariadne auf Naxos.” And, toward the end, the orchestra luxuriated in the wandering chromatic music that demonstrates Strauss’s debt to Schoenberg, whose “Verklärte Nacht” opened the concert with the same sense of unforced flow that Thielemann brought to “An Alpine Symphony.”That easy flow, though, managed to convey the opposite of ease, making this score sound more mysterious and thorny, and more engrossing, than I’d ever heard it. This was a truly persuasive performance.So was the rendition of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony on Sunday. As in the Strauss, Thielemann conveyed a sense of continuity, of great arches, that pressed intensity through the work’s endless, hypnotic repetitions. (And, as in the Strauss, the strings in particular never let up.) At the start of the Adagio, the melody was properly broad without losing the line, and the Finale was a medieval edifice, looming through fog and in sunshine.The careful control from Thielemann that gave tautness to “An Alpine Symphony” and the Bruckner took away a certain bucolic character in Mendelssohn’s “Hebrides” Overture and Symphony No. 3, which had a weight, even a severity, on Saturday that brought them in line with Brahms’s Symphony No. 2 after intermission.Scattered through the weekend were some quirks — moments of uneasy intonation and tiny flaws, including a hiccup on the opening chord of the Bruckner symphony. But these issues felt tiny next to all the breathtaking things this orchestra does: ends of phrases so elegantly rounded they almost make you sigh; the uncanny matching of tone and texture between horn and strings in the Bruckner Adagio; the silkiness of the start of the Brahms symphony’s finale; and effortlessly idiomatic moments like a delightfully squealing, squelching chord in “An Alpine Symphony.”And there are aspects of sound in which the Viennese remain distinctively themselves: their winds woodsier — darker, somehow damper and more moodily blended, like a forest floor — than you hear from other orchestras, and the brasses in ensemble closer to a bronze shield than a golden spear.A year ago, the Philharmonic’s annual New York visit was not so focused on the music-making. In the lead-up to those concerts in late February, the orchestra and Carnegie came under scrutiny for the decision to collaborate with the conductor Valery Gergiev, a prominent supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. It was only after the invasion of Ukraine began, the day before the first performance, that the orchestra and hall dropped their defenses of Gergiev and replaced him.It was an irruption of politics into an ensemble whose brand has been defined by insulation from all that. Beyond the standard-repertory programs this weekend, the encores, as usual, came from the nostalgic dream world of the Philharmonic’s waltz- and polka-filled New Year’s concerts, which do their best to pretend that the past 150 years never happened.This orchestra is devoted to tending the fire of tradition; in this task, it has in Thielemann perhaps the perfect partner. More

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      5 Classical Music Albums You Can Listen to Right Now

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      Recordings of Brahms, Haydn, Grieg, Nikolai Kapustin and George Walker are among recent highlights.‘Blueprint’: Piano Music by Nikolai Kapustin for Jazz TrioFrank Dupree, piano; Jakob Krupp, bass; Obi Jenne, drums (Capriccio)When I reported last year on the pianist Frank Dupree’s first album of works by Nikolai Kapustin, Dupree previewed things to come. For his follow-up engagement with Kapustin, a swing-influenced Russian composer, Dupree said he would release a series of solo piano works played by a traditional jazz trio.Now that the results are out, the wisdom of the idea is evident. Dupree could have recorded an enjoyable solo set, as his feel for Kapustin is as fluid as ever. But we currently have no lack of one-player recitals of this music — including from Marc-André Hamelin, Steven Osborne and Kapustin himself.The improvised element on “Blueprint” is subtle. Dupree plays the piano solos as they were notated, and the bassist Jakob Krupp follows his left hand. The album’s distinguishing element of improvisation is left to the percussionist Obi Jenne. And it’s his interventions that truly elevate this set. In a piece like the Op. 41 Variations, Kapustin moves briskly between different syncopated styles; Jenne’s mutable beat-juggling highlights each change. Perhaps not every item here needed the jazz combo treatment. But when the arrangements work — as on selections from the Eight Concert Études — this trio adds to the material a new jolt. SETH COLTER WALLSBrahms: Late Piano WorksPaul Lewis, piano (Harmonia Mundi)To listen to the pianist Paul Lewis’s new album of late Brahms, you would think these pieces had been written just after the last sonatas of Schubert, which Lewis has recorded with wrenching restraint. Splicing the gap between 1828 and the early 1890s, Lewis’s is a vision of Brahms as fully Classicist; these final four sets of solos are rendered with judicious tempos and a clean, calm touch — intelligent, sensitive readings.The pearly moderation that makes Lewis’s Schubert so movingly humble sometimes keeps his Brahms shy of grandeur and especially mystery. These are tender, affecting interpretations more than pensive, let alone unsettling, ones; Lewis sometimes stints the softest dynamics, giving a slight sense of straightforwardness when you want intimations (at least) of the epic. The Intermezzo in E flat (Op. 117, No. 1) doesn’t seem to lose itself in the middle section — as it does in Radu Lupu’s benchmark 1987 recording — so the return to the theme is less than overwhelming.But a cleareyed Intermezzo in A (Op. 118, No. 2) is deeply satisfying; the Intermezzo in E Minor (Op. 119, No. 2) leavens lucidity with dreaminess. And Lewis’s sparkle in the middle of the Romanze in F (Op. 118, No. 5) gives the shift back to sober feeling at the end quietly immense power. ZACHARY WOOLFEGrieg: SongsLise Davidsen, soprano; Leif Ove Andsnes, piano (Decca)The recording industry has finally found a way to capture Lise Davidsen. A luminous soprano of remarkable range, equally capable of floodlight power and the piercing smallness of a laser pointer, she wasn’t well represented on her first two albums for Decca, which were documents of sensitive and intelligent interpretation more than versatility or resounding might.Now, after programs of Wagner, Strauss, Beethoven and Verdi, comes a much more intimate album of Grieg songs performed with the pianist Leif Ove Andsnes — a pairing of two excellent Norwegian musicians in works by their country’s most treasured composer. The scale of this program is better suited than Davidsen’s earlier albums at conveying the dexterity of her voice, and her gift for endearing levity; there are playful turns of phrase here that you just don’t get in “Tannhäuser.”Throughout the album — which begins with the eight-song cycle “The Mountain Maid” and continues with excerpts from other collections — Andsnes is an evocative tone painter, with dreamy glissandos in “Singing,” galloping festivity in “Midsummer Eve” and flowing momentum in “A Boat on the Waves Is Rocking.” And Davidsen is a nimble raconteur, lovingly warm in the opening cycle’s “Meeting,” then shattering in its Schubertian finale, “At the Gjaetle Brook,” and later bringing both folk lightness and Wagnerian heft to the six songs of Op. 48. To the credit of Grieg and these artists, you’ll never be so moved by a song called “Snail, Snail!” JOSHUA BARONEHaydn: SymphoniesAcademy of St. Martin in the Fields; Neville Marriner, conductor (Eloquence)It’s easy now to be a little sniffy about Neville Marriner’s achievements with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, a partnership renowned as the most recorded in history. With the success of the period-instrument movement, their hundreds of recordings on modern instruments have gained the reputation of being a bit staid — practical and reliable, to be sure, but nevertheless dusty relics of an era best forgotten.But this thoroughly enjoyable 15-disc set — which for the first time brings together 33 Haydn symphonies set down between 1970 and 1990 — is ample reminder that there were perfectly good artistic reasons Marriner and his chamber-orchestra forces were such a roaring commercial success.Conceiving their work initially as a crisp, stylish rejoinder to an older, stouter approach to the Baroque and Classical repertoire, they played this music with insatiable collective commitment — the slow movements singing gracefully, the outer movements sparkling in their drive and invention. If there is a little more zest in their accounts of Haydn’s earlier symphonies than his later ones, they are all brilliantly well judged, and full of life. DAVID ALLENGeorge Walker: Piano SonatasSteven Beck, piano (Bridge)In 2018, when the composer and pianist George Walker died at 96, there were plenty of accomplishments to memorialize, including his Pulitzer Prize — the first awarded to a Black composer. But there was also a dispiriting acknowledgment of a missed opportunity, given that so few elite classical institutions had seriously engaged with Walker’s work while he was alive.The inattention extended to recordings; there remains a notable dearth of sets devoted exclusively to Walker. Very partial redress comes in the form of this new album, in which Steven Beck takes on all five of Walker’s piano sonatas, written between 1953 and 2003.The first sonata, revised in 1991, offers some of the galloping energy seemingly required when suggesting Americana, but it also includes a rambunctious harmonic edge that bristles with maverick spirit. By the time of the Third Sonata, written in 1975 and revised in 1996, atonality had taken center stage. But Walker’s signature feel for contrast — including alternations between motifs that ring out and peremptory chordal bursts — is still evident. With playing that’s slashing and sensitive by turns, Beck’s recital accentuates the through lines in a protean artistic life. SETH COLTER WALLS More

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      Review: Schumann at the Philharmonic. Robert, Too.

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      With a debuting pianist and conductor, a solo by Clara Schumann preceded works by her husband and Brahms.Hasn’t the New York Philharmonic been through enough? Closed for a year and a half by the pandemic, and exiled from its home for renovations during its return season, the orchestra is now at the mercy of visa delays.Caused by backlogs and staff shortages at embassies and consulates around the world, these delays are plaguing a classical field that depends on the easy travel of musicians from abroad. They kept the Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes from coming here this week to play; and if one cancellation wasn’t enough, the planned conductor, Jaap van Zweden, the Philharmonic’s music director, also withdrew, because of a family medical emergency.But when the dust settled, this left an enjoyable double debut with the orchestra at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center on Thursday: the pianist Alessio Bax and the conductor Giancarlo Guerrero.There was a quiet milestone in the program, which was retained with the new performers. While Robert Schumann’s works are fixtures of the repertory, those of his wife, Clara, an accomplished composer and one of the great piano virtuosos of the 19th century, are decidedly not. So when Bax entered and began Clara Schumann’s brief but eloquently wistful Romance in A minor, it was the first time her music was being played for a Philharmonic subscription audience.Its subdued ending led, without pause, to the dramatic burst that begins another work in A minor: Robert Schumann’s war horse piano concerto. Bax, well known to New York audiences in chamber music over the past decade, started with a tone of pristine Classicism that swiftly dissolved into washes of dreamier mistiness, without ever losing clarity.With the strings often evocatively gauzy, wind solos slicing piquantly through the textures, he and Guerrero conveyed the work’s mercurial swerves of mood without affectation or exaggeration. The lyrical effusions of the second movement were answered with crisp changeability; the finale had a surreally martial undercurrent. The performance was suavely manic, as it should be.It was a progressive move, yes, to bring the Schumanns together. Next it would be wonderful to hear Clara’s piano concerto — also, as it happens, in A minor — from the Philharmonic; Isata Kanneh-Mason, among others, has recorded it to impressive effect.Critics often valorize concert programs that sprawl across time. But the Philharmonic did well to pair the Schumanns with their great friend Johannes Brahms for a tightly focused evening of works written in the 1840s and ’50s. And not one of his frequently played symphonies — the First comes to the Philharmonic next month — but the second of his earlier, rarer pair of serenades.Brahms wrote these works as he was still experimenting with composing for orchestra; revised in the mid-1870s, the score of the 30-minute Serenade No. 2 lacks violins, for a melancholy tinge to the general geniality. Guerrero — the music director of the Nashville Symphony and a grinning presence with expressive fingers and a shiny suit — led a subtly energetic performance, bringing out both the delicacy and the darkness in the third movement and the Schubertian wistfulness in the fourth.Vivid yet unexaggerated, just like in the Schumann concerto, the playing had the intimate warmth that the orchestra also brought to Haydn’s “Oxford” Symphony in the same space a few weeks ago. It speaks to how successfully the Philharmonic is scaling down to the 1,200-seat Rose Theater, and to two auspicious debuts.New York PhilharmonicThis program continues through Saturday at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      A Pianist Comes Around on Period Instruments

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      Early in his career, Andras Schiff disdained historical authenticity. Now he embraces it, including on a revelatory new Brahms recording.For much of his career, the eminent pianist Andras Schiff, 67, disdained the use of historical instruments. He proudly played Bach on modern pianos; referred to fortepianists with an interest in Schubert as mere “specialists”; and told a New York Times interviewer in 1983, “I’ve heard some ghastly things done in the name of authenticity.”Time and experience, though, have brought about a wholesale change in his attitude, and Schiff has transformed into an eager evangelist for the use of historical keyboards. Several years ago he acquired an 1820 fortepiano, which he has used to make compelling recordings of Beethoven and Schubert. In recent interviews, he has criticized the increasing homogeneity of piano performance, with modern Steinways used for repertoire of every era.Schiff’s latest venture in this arena is his most convincing yet: a vibrant new recording of Brahms’s two piano concertos with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Aiming to recover the sound of this music when it was written, Schiff plays a piano made by Julius Blüthner in Leipzig, Germany, in 1859 — the year of the First Concerto’s premiere. He also — a rarity in these works — serves as both soloist and conductor, leading an ensemble of around 50 players.Schiff appearing with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, which plays on period instruments, in London in 2019.Tristram KentonWiping away the historical grime, Schiff and the orchestra breathe air and vitality into pieces that, even in successful performances, can sound heavy and clotted; the drier instrumental palette instead conveys improbable elegance. Words like monumental have a way of attaching themselves to these concertos, but Mr. Schiff and the outstanding players make them sound intimate and human-scale.Schiff spoke about these works and his interpretations in a recent phone call from London. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What changed your skepticism about historical instruments?What converted me was when I first played Mozart’s piano in Salzburg, in the room where he was born. This must have been the second half of the 1980s. It was the first time I met an instrument — an original instrument, not a copy — that was in wonderful condition. Subsequently, there were many occasions to find wonderful instruments. I’m now getting to a place where I will find it very difficult to play music on modern pianos.But even as late as the 1990s, you were still saying in interviews that, for example, you wouldn’t think of playing Schubert on a fortepiano.I did say that, yes. I have to take it back, or I have to say that I was not well-informed, or plain stupid. One has to be flexible and one has to say, sometimes, I made a mistake; I was wrong.Why was Brahms the next composer you decided to record in a historically informed way?It was a logical step from Schubert. And also, I met this wonderful orchestra, the Age of Enlightenment, and we did the Robert Schumann concerto together at the Royal Festival Hall in London, which has something like two and a half thousand seats.It’s a very problematic hall. There are always seats where the piano is covered by the orchestra. And for the first time in my life, in the Schumann with this orchestra it was absolutely without any problems: the balance, the way the piano came across, the way the orchestral parts came across. So after the Schumann I thought, Let’s try the Brahms.Playing the Brahms concertos on a modern piano with modern orchestras, there were always balance problems. And I found, especially in the B-flat Concerto, that it was just physically and psychologically very hard to play. Somehow, with this Blüthner piano, the physical difficulties disappear. The keys are a tiny bit narrower, so the stretches are not so tiring, and the action is much lighter. So there is not this colossal physical work involved.What were the challenges of doing the concertos in this way?The challenge is, of course, to play and conduct and hold it together. And there are many, many places where your hands are busy, so you cannot conduct. Therefore, you need a real partner, because this is not accompaniment, but give and take. And so the orchestra has to anticipate and listen very carefully. It needs an orchestra where we know each other intimately, which has a chamber-music-like approach.You achieve a remarkable level of audible detail in these performances.That was our intention: transparency and clarity, and also just to get rid of the fat already associated with this music from, I would say, the 1930s. And in orchestral terms, for example, the gut strings make a huge difference.I think that in any music you play, this heaviness also comes from — if you see, let’s say, a dotted half note or a long note, people just sit on it forever. The composer will not write a diminuendo on that long note, because Brahms, let’s say, expected a musical person to do that automatically.You’re saying that he didn’t write the diminuendo just because it would have been obvious to the performer.Yes. This already happens all over in Mozart and Beethoven. With every orchestra, when I play and conduct, I have to tell them, endless times, “You wind players, please, attack the note, and then get softer,” because with those sustained chords, you are covering all the detail that you spoke about.Can you think of a particular passage in either of the Brahms concertos in which the use of these instruments allows the music to come across with unusual freshness?For example, in the first movement of the Second Concerto, the development section can sound, in modern performance, very muddy and not clear, because there is so much counterpoint there. I’m very pleased to hear all those details.But also, take the opening of the third movement, with the cello solo. If it’s played with these instruments, next to the cello solo you hear all the other lower strings: the cellos and violas, and then later the oboe and bassoon. I just hear these layers of sound, instead of a general sauce.You also write in the liner notes that “Brahms on the piano is definitely not for children.” What do you mean?I have a very strong view on this, what young people should play and what they should not play. They should not play the early Brahms, because of the enormous physical challenges, and they shouldn’t, certainly, play the late Brahms, where they could manage the notes, but those pieces are the summary of a lifetime.But they do it anyway. I mean, today, any kid comes to you with the “Goldberg” Variations or the last three Beethoven sonatas. Anything goes. And who am I to say? I’m not a policeman. It’s a friendly piece of advice that when you are young, choose the right pieces. And wait with these until you are older.In my ripe old age, I’m beginning now to reduce my repertoire. But I’m very happy to play now the late Brahms, and the last three sonatas of Beethoven. And then there is music, Bach and Mozart, that you start playing when you are very young, and they stay with you until the day you die. More

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      5 Minutes That Will Make You Love Brahms

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      Listen as Carlos Santana, Branford Marsalis and others pick their favorites of the moody master of 19th-century music.In the past, we’ve chosen the five minutes or so we would play to make our friends fall in love with classical music, the piano, opera, the cello, Mozart, 21st-century composers, the violin, Baroque music, sopranos, Beethoven, the flute, string quartets and tenors.Now we want to convince those curious friends to love the music of Johannes Brahms (1833-97), master of stirring symphonic exclamations and moody piano solos. We hope you find lots here to discover and enjoy; leave your favorites in the comments.◆ ◆ ◆Isata Kanneh-Mason, pianistThe beginning of Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is one of my favorite concerto openings. It’s got drama, intensity and emotion — and that’s before the piano even joins! The soloist doesn’t come in for almost four minutes while the orchestra has a long, thrilling introduction illustrating the themes of the movement. Brahms uses the full orchestra, with a lot of grandeur, so the entrance of the piano is always a beautiful surprise, coming in very lyrical and soft. And after such a long wait!Piano Concerto No. 1Krystian Zimerman, piano; Berlin Philharmonic; Simon Rattle, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Carlos Santana, guitarist and songwriterWhen my father died in 1997, I made a resolution that I wouldn’t listen to music for two months. And after two months, my father’s voice said to me, “I need you to play music now.” So I turned on the radio. I was taking my son to school, and as soon as I turned it on, I heard that melody. My father played the violin, and I felt a connection, that he was directing me to this song; it turned out it was Brahms. Not long after, we were working on “Supernatural” with Dave Matthews, and this song came up again. I shared it with Dave, and the next thing you know, it went on the album as “Love of My Life.”Symphony No. 3New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conductor (Sony Classical)◆ ◆ ◆Branford Marsalis, composer and saxophonistUnlike a lot of modern musicians who are hellbent on this individuality thing, I openly admit to thievery. I steal. And I steal a lot from Brahms. There are times it’s unintentional, and times it’s quite intentional. This was 50/50. I did some music for “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” and I wrote a melancholy piece for Toledo, the piano player in the movie, and string orchestra. I’m writing the melody and I resolved it in the third and fourth bars. I stole that second half from somewhere, but it took weeks for me to figure out where. Of course, I took it from one of Brahms’s intermezzos.Intermezzo in A minor (Op. 76, No. 7)Glenn Gould, piano (Sony Classical)◆ ◆ ◆Barbara Hendricks, sopranoMy introduction to Brahms came in 1975 at Carnegie Hall, where Herbert von Karajan was conducting the Second and Fourth Symphonies with the Berlin Philharmonic. I had just auditioned for him; he asked me to prepare the soprano solo from the “German Requiem” so that I could sing it at the end of the tour, and he invited me to the concert. It was an unforgettable experience. I later recorded the “Requiem” with him and the Vienna Philharmonic: I dedicate that solo to all who have lost loved ones or are suffering because of this pandemic, essential workers, and victims of conflicts and tragedies all over the world.“A German Requiem”(Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Tania León, composerDedicated to Clara Schumann, this intermezzo is emotional and intense. It has a magical spell, a loving aura that gently touches the heart. The power of this music sends you to a world of introspection and intimate tranquillity. It is a piece that never dies; it alludes to something you can never grab. You listen to its poetry, and it compels you to listen again and again.Intermezzo in A (Op. 118, No. 2)Murray Perahia, piano (Sony Classical)◆ ◆ ◆Anthony Tommasini, Times chief classical music criticI love the spacious, probing, moody Brahms; the Brahms of breadth and depth; the progressive composer whose mature harmonic language anticipated the atonality of Schoenberg. But Brahms, a virtuosic pianist in his prime, also has a wild side, a showy streak. And no music better captures him in that vein than the dancing, dizzying finale of his Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, which he calls a rondo “in the Gypsy style.” On this exciting recording from 1967, Artur Rubinstein, then a month shy of 80, joins far younger members of the Guarneri Quartet.Piano Quartet No. 1(Sony Classical)◆ ◆ ◆Zachary Woolfe, Times classical music editorHere’s more of that jovial Brahms: the finale of his Violin Concerto, a dance with one foot in a sumptuous ballroom, the other in a down-and-dirty village square. After the concerto’s tender slow movement, it’s an irresistible explosion. The soloist here is the silver-toned Janine Jansen; I heard her play this not long before the pandemic began, so for me it’s a precious reminder of what came before — and what will come after.Violin ConcertoOrchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; Antonio Pappano, conductor (Decca)◆ ◆ ◆Bongani Ndodana-Breen, composerBrahms gave us music of great emotional depth that forces us to pause and reflect. On the whole, his musical demeanor is serious and beautifully melancholic. His “German Requiem” has lived with me since my teens in South Africa, when I first heard it at an arts festival. Three years later I would turn to it when mourning the devastating loss of my grandmother. Instead of the traditional Latin Requiem, Brahms assembled his own beautiful text from biblical sources, in a setting that gave them new meanings. From the opening motif in the cellos to the first words sung by the chorus — “Blessed are they that mourn” — we are embraced with warmth, comfort and, dare one say, love. I have had to turn to it again during this pandemic to quietly grieve the loss of close friends.“A German Requiem”WDR Symphony Orchestra; Jukka-Pekka Saraste, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Peter Pesic, pianist and scientistWhen I was 11, I went deaf from ear infections. After an operation, I was taken to a concert to try out my recovering hearing. The effect of this music was overwhelming. Later, I realized that no other piece of music begins like this: at the crisis, the critical moment. Over the insistent throbbing of a drum, the orchestra soars slowly upward, straining against gravity, struggling so hard yet falling short. It spoke to me even as a child. How could something so heart-rending be so beautiful? Where did this immense struggle lead? I had to know.Symphony No. 1Columbia Symphony Orchestra; Bruno Walter, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Iman Habibi, composerBrahms’s most intimate emotions manifested themselves in his final sets of piano pieces, Op. 116 to 119. My appreciation for them grew with each encounter: first, when I learned some of them as an undergraduate piano student; later, when I had the opportunity to study them in graduate school; and, most recently, as this composer’s last thoughts resounded through our home as my wife, Deborah, performed and recorded the Op. 119 set. These pieces feel personal and remarkably mature in their simplicity, teeming with an abundance of beauty and intricate detail.Intermezzo in E minor (Op. 119, No. 2)Deborah Grimmett, piano◆ ◆ ◆Hyeyung Sol Yoon, violinistI think back to my ornithologist father-in-law wondering aloud, “How was Brahms able to create music that sounds like the vastness of nature?” And to my former teacher ruminating that Brahms was always trying to write textures that were too big for a given ensemble. I listen to the slow movement of the Clarinet Quintet, and I hear, at a microscopic level, that he is creating a boundless world. It’s like seeing the sinew of the body, the veins of the leaves. There’s so much to take in: richness of the harmonies, rhythm of duplets and triplets rubbing against each other. They all gather to bind the sadness and beauty of this revelatory work.Clarinet QuintetAnthony McGill, clarinet; Pacifica Quartet (Cedille)◆ ◆ ◆Valerie Coleman, composer and flutistBrahms’s Fourth Symphony never fails to fill concert hall seats with its charm and familiar interplay between strings and woodwinds. I love it because of how it makes me feel. It’s an old friend who visits. Together we walk along a woodsy trail, laughing and reminiscing in a constant dialogue of all the happy memories of summer festivals gone by.Symphony No. 4Philadelphia Orchestra; Yannick Nézet-Séguin, conductor◆ ◆ ◆Jeff Scott, hornistWhen I went to Manhattan School of Music in the mid-1980s, I’d go to the library to do my listening homework. One day I was preparing for a reading of the Brahms Op. 40 Trio; one version looked interesting because it had been recorded at the Marlboro Festival, which I knew, even as a freshman, was prestigious. The horn player was Myron Bloom, one of the greats — though I had no idea who he was at the time. The pianist Rudolf Serkin and the violinist Michael Tree were also legends. This recording changed my perception of what classical music is — and how beautifully the French horn could fit into the canon.Horn Trio(Sony Classical)◆ ◆ ◆Simon Halsey, choral conductor“Music for the soul,” “medicine for the voice”: These are two of the comments from my singers when we made this recording of “A German Requiem.” To go deep into the text — its phrasing, diction and meaning — was part of a fascinating journey with this great choir and orchestra, savoring the instinctive understanding of the tradition; the warm, velvety choral sound; and the virtuosity of the Berlin Philharmonic. Everything came together. This piece is so well known in Germany that you can feel the audience singing along in their imaginations; it’s music that elevates us as we share it.“A German Requiem”Berlin Radio Choir and Berlin Philharmonic; Simon Rattle, conductor (Warner Classics)◆ ◆ ◆Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, Times music writerIt’s not just strange, the change from major to minor: In this breathless ride of a Scherzo, it feels violent, with existential stakes, as the two modes tussle for control with the gritted urgency of antagonists fighting atop a runaway train. The rhythm, too, veers sharply between duple and triple forms, even as the momentum barrels forward. The sense of unity and propulsive flow that grows out of this destabilizing mix of elements is uncanny — Brahms at his intoxicating and brainy best.Piano Quintet in F minorQuatuor Ébène; Akiko Yamamoto, piano (Erato)◆ ◆ ◆Seth Colter Walls, Times music writerWas Brahms a classicist or a progressive? Why not both? Wilhelm Kempff’s restrained, artful approach to the late piano works serves as a reminder of how to bring it all together. Gorgeous melodic lines are shaped with a singing quality; surprising ruptures have a teasing playfulness. And not long after the three-minute mark in a recording of Op. 119, No. 4, Kempff honors some stray, crunchy low-end notes that trouble the otherwise lilting passage — balancing Brahms’s strangeness with his grace.Rhapsody in E flat (Op. 119, No. 4)(Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Hélène Grimaud, pianistWith and in music, one can withstand the ambient chaos of life and rediscover a possible harmony which doesn’t speak of lost paradise but of paradise found. Romanticism is a way of being. It is a fight for wholeness, for what is essential. It is to go toward that goal with empty hands and an open heart. Music is passion which has found its rhythm. With Brahms, the music’s inner pulse is very close to that of the human heart. Through his signature “Rückblick,” this sense of longing and looking back, his language becomes poignant beyond words.Symphony No. 3Vienna Philharmonic; Carlo Maria Giulini, conductor (Deutsche Grammophon)◆ ◆ ◆Joshua Barone, Times editorIf anyone ever tells you that Brahms is boring or unemotional — and, bafflingly, that’s bound to happen — just respond with any of the three intermezzos of his Opus 117. After the first, a lullaby of crushing beauty, comes No. 2, in B flat minor. It too is a lullaby, with a lilting melody — as simple as the two-note phrases that open his Fourth Symphony — emerging from gently flowing runs. Despite the cascading architecture, it is not so much a passionate outpouring as an invitation, from one lonely soul to another, for five minutes of deeply felt intimacy.Intermezzo in B flat minor (Op. 117, No. 2)Radu Lupu, piano (Decca)◆ ◆ ◆David Allen, Times writerIt took me a long time to love Brahms, whose music once struck me as all too sleepy — “autumnal,” we critics often call it. It wasn’t until time forced me to learn that to live is to lose, I think, that I came to obsess over the dark side of his scores: the grief and sorrow, the loneliness and guilt, the desperation, even the anger. Nowhere is that darkness more engulfing than in his fourth and final symphony, a work with rage at its heart, whatever face it might try to maintain. And no conductor has made its horrors more consuming than Wilhelm Furtwängler.Symphony No. 4Berlin Philharmonic (Pristine Audio)◆ ◆ ◆ More