Brahms: Intermezzi, Op. 117

On her debut album, Mihaela Ursuleasa takes the listener with her on a journey. It is a journey that leads from the past into the present and at the same time, back to her Romanian roots. Each stage of the journey is an adventure in its own right, revealing another brilliant facet of the artist.

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.

Gourari plays the late piano pieces of Brahms, including Fantasies and the Intermezzi. This is the Russian pianist’s debut on the Berlin Classics label. She has been praised for her “almost mystical piano playing”.

New recording: one of a series of releases from Brilliant Classics featuring outstanding young artists who have won the principal prizes at the Young Pianist Foundation’s National Piano Competition.

Thomas Beijer, born in 1988, started playing and studying the piano at the age of 8. A pupil of Jan Wijn, he won the prestigious Dutch Young Pianist Foundation Prize in 2007. He performs frequently both in the Netherlands and internationally.

Brahms’s output for solo piano spans his creative life, from the early Scherzo Op.4 of 1851, to the late Intermezzi Opp. 116–9. The Third Sonata Op.5, the central work on this disc, was the last to be written for solo piano – all his other sonatas being for piano with violin, cello, clarinet/viola. It is a heroic, large-scale piece, presenting considerable technical demands for the pianist. Cast in five movements, the fourth is an intermezzo, a form that Brahms became preoccupied with later in his career. The second movement is prefaced with lines from a poem by Sternau: ‘The twilight falls, the moonlight gleams, two hearts in loveunite, embraced in blissful rapture.’

Schumann described Brahms’s three sonatas for piano as ‘symphonies in disguise’, such is their size and temperament. The first of the two works in Op.79 was originally to be called ‘capriccio’, but an exchange with Brahms’s publisher Simrock settled the matter and ‘ Rhapsody’ became the term for both these thrilling works. They are marked ‘agitato’ and ‘passionato’ respectively.

"David Wilde's power and individuality make a separation between composer and performer, between creator and recreator unrealistic. He sees the simple grace and lyricism favoured by many pianists as an evasion of a deeper poetic truth, and if he gives us all of Brahms' exulting strength in the fugue from the 'Handel' Variations, he is no less responsive to darker nights of the soul in Op. 117. Always there is an open invitation to re-appraise Brahms' genius, not by a radical reinterpretation (the determinedly 'different' way of, say, Gould or Pogorelich), but by a probing and enquiring look beneath the music's surface life. David Wilde may be true to the composer, but he is a pianist to make you think again." Bryce Morrison

"One of the most intense and involving performances that I've heard" International Record Review on David Wilde on Delphian