Johannes Brahms

The Salzburg performances of Wilhelm Backhaus, by contrast, all had something imperturbably monumental about them. For Backhaus, 2009 marked a double anniversary: the 125th anniversary of his birth and the 40th of his death.The Austrian Radio archives contain tapes of him playing two concertos with the Vienna Philharmonic under Karl Böhm, the first from 1960, the second from 1968, on both occasions in the Großes Festspielhaus, neither performance showing any signs of artistic compromise in spite of Backhaus's advancing years.To Mozart's final piano concerto he brings extreme delicacy and a sense of rapt otherworldliness, whereas Brahms's Second Piano Concerto has all the weight of tone that one could possibly want not only in the work's chordal textures but also in its pounding passage-work. Nor is the concerto's careful structure neglected by Böhm, who was no less strict with himself than he was with his partners when it was a question of imposing his commanding grasp of architectural form on a piece.

In 1958 Pierre Fournier made his belated Festival début, at the Mozarteum, in a recital accompanied by the pianist Franz Holetschek. In the process he confirmed his reputation as the 'aristocrat of the cello', magisterially rising to the challenges of his chosen programme. It is no wonder, then, that in the wake of his brilliant début, Fournier was from then on a welcome visitor to the Salzburg Festival.

CD+DVD

This unusual project presents a rounded portrait of the Belgrade-born pianist Mira Yevtich through a live concert DVD of Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto for piano & strings and four diverse pieces for solo piano by Venetian composer Baldassare Galuppi, via Haydn and Brahms to Alexander Tchaikovsky (born 1946), and a CD, recorded in a Moscow Radio studio, of those same four solo works. Mira Yevtich studied at Moscow’s Tchaikovsky Conservatoire and won the 1988 International Festival of Modern Music in St Petersburg. Now an Australian national, she is a regular soloist at Sydney Opera House, and performs in Russia and throughout Europe and America. She has played with conductors such as Valeri Gergiev, Evgeni Svetlanov, and Yuri Bashmet, and made several CDs, among them four for Bel Air. These include Mozart Piano Concertos, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, and most recently ‘The Music of Grant Foster’.

Here her typically enterprising repertoire encompasses a Haydn Sonata and Brahms Two Rhapsodies, Op 79, and two rarities, a keyboard sonata by Galuppi, the prolific Italian Baroque composer very much better known for his operas, and the Piano Sonata dedicated to her by contemporary Russian composer Alexander Tchaikovsky (apparently unrelated to his famous namesake Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky). Her performance of the Schnittke concerto with the State Hermitage Orchestra under Vladimir Fanshil and the alternative versions of the four solo pieces were recorded in St Petersburg in May.

Håkon Austbø was born in Norway, and now resides on Holland.

In 1971 he won the prestigious Olivier Messiaen prize. His recording of Scriabin sonatas was praised by the Gramophone as ‘Scriabin playing that can stand comparison with the finest on record’.

Brahms was a formidable pianist, and his early works were written to show of his tremendous technique. The piano sonatas Opp. 1–3 typify the highly virtuosic muscular style that suited his performing style. Brahms never revisited the piano sonata form after these early works, and his output for solo piano falls distinctly in top three groups. The early impetuous works, then from 1854-73 the more technical works, and, finally the late works from the 1890s included on this CD. These works are contemplative and autumnal, though the drama and tensions of the earlier works are never far away. The Op.116 set is remarkable in that its seven linked numbers form a single unity. It is in fact a seven movement sonata. Op.117 contains probably some of the most beautiful music Brahms’s composed. The 3 Intermezzi are reflective, deeply personal works. Op.118 contains severe technical demands for the performer, as well as music of incredible passion and sadness. Op.119 contains a Rhapsody, which is widely regarded as a final tribute to his pianist friend Clara Schumann. Brahms was madly in love with her, but although they were great friends, his love went unrequited.

By the time Brahms published his first violin sonata during the remarkably fertile period of the Second Symphony and the violin concerto, he had probably written and abandoned as many as four earlier violin sonatas. He was determined to find the correct balance between the considerable piano part he intended for the work, and the violin role, which had to compete with and complement the other instrument. The G major work combines the intimacy of chamber music with the broader gestures of the violin concerto, and like the concerto and Second Symphony is awonderfully lyrical work.

The Second Sonata of 1886 continues this balance of lyricism, virtuosity and the perfect balance between the two instruments. This sonata quotes from Act III of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The Third Sonata of 1888 is a more turbulent and terse work, and the only one of the three to be cast in four movements. As with many of the great late period works, Brahms combines traditional late-Romantic period gestures with some daring modern features – something the young Arnold Schoenberg was watching with interest.

On its first release, this 1955 recording was praised as “a worthy performance of the work and a well recorded one” by Gramophone, which also commented that “Elisabeth Grümmer sings her solo with beautiful tone and deep feeling” and “Fischer-Dieskau gives a[n] expressive and musical account of his part”.

The choir and orchestra perform with measures of equal conviction, subtlety and power.

Recognised as a ‘musician’s conductor’, Rudolf Kempe was an outstanding interpreter of the German classics, always obtaining beautifully lucid playing allied to clarity of rhythm and sensitive phrasing.

The songs of Brahms span his entire, 60-year creative life, and contain many of his most personal utterances, as well as many of his most charming. From the jolly, openhearted, rustic charm of the Volkslieder to the cool refined beauty of the Sapphische Ode, Brahms’s lyrical gift is everywhere evident, according to each song only the weight of expression that is appropriate to its temper.

Countless babies have been rocked to sleep by the Wiegenlied, but they would quickly be woken again by the soul-searching despair of his last essays in the genre, the Four Serious Songs. Complete sets of this extensive part of Brahms’s output are hard to come by – there is but one other currently available – and this is the only one recorded in entirely modern, digital technology. Many of the individual volumes feature some of the best young singers of their generation, guided by the experienced accompanimental hand of Helmut Deutsch.

“Here is a singer-actor who has it all…” The Sunday Times

“In a league of his own…” The Sunday Telegraph

“The king of barnstorming performances…” The Independent

Sony Music Entertainment UK is pleased to present the first of three albums by British baritone Simon Keenlyside, who has recently signed a new exclusive recording contract with the Sony UK company.

The first recording under this exciting new agreement features Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Op.48, and a selection of Lieder by Brahms, sensitively accompanied by pianist Malcolm Martineau.

Simon Keenlyside was born in London and studied zoology at Cambridge before attending the Royal Northern College of Music for vocal studies. One of the world’s most sought-after and charismatic singers, he has appeared at many of the world’s major opera houses and concert halls, and is noted for his versatility and highly charged performances. Highlights of his career so far include his acclaimed performance of Billy Budd at the ENO, Prospero in the world premiere of Thomas Ades' The Tempest, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Count Almaviva in Milan and Vienna under Muti; Don Giovanni in Ferrara under Abbado and Pelleas in San Francisco, Geneva and Paris.

Simon Keenlyside won the 2006 Olivier Award for outstanding achievement in Opera for his performance of Billy Budd at ENO and Winston in the world premiere of 1984 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and in 2007 he won a Gramophone Award for Tales Of Opera, his album of operatic arias recorded for Sony Music in Germany.

Christoph Eschenbach conducts the extremely talented young musicians of the Schleswig-Holstien Orchestra in this truly exhilarating performance – a stunning recording.