Reinhard Febel

“The 11 Chorale Preludes for organ, Op 122, was Brahms’s final work, written after the death of Clara Schumann and imbued with a stoic solemnity. Here, they are given in a transcription by his friend Eusebius Mandyczewski for four-handed piano, a medium Brahms did so much to foster. The effect is inevitably to lighten the tone, but the pieces’ grave beauty and profound inventiveness are not incompatible with charm. This seems to be the version’s first recording, and the fine duettists’ other items, both fascinating, are premieres, too: Reger’s chorale Phantasie, Op 30, in his four-hand piano version, and Reinhard Febel’s bitonally haloed Seven Chorale Arrangements after Bach.” Sunday Times, 15th June 2008 ***