Brahms: Intermezzo in E major, Op. 116 No. 6

This is Volume 2 in our series devoted to the works for solo piano by Johannes Brahms, with the acclaimed pianist Barry Douglas. Since winning the Gold Medal at the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow, Douglas has established a major international career, and his reputation as a pianist and conductor continues to grow.

Brahms wrote his set of four Ballades, Op. 10 (of which Nos 2 and 3 are included on this disc) at the age of twenty-one, and at a time of much personal upheaval. His friend and patron Schumann had attempted suicide and been confined to a sanatorium near Bonn, and Brahms had been thrust into the role of protector and comforter of Schumann’s wife, Clara, while coming to terms with his own strong feelings for her. Reflective of the difficult situation, these Ballades display a deep-felt blend of the dramatic and the lyrical.

A few months before he composed the Ballades, during his stay with the Schumanns in October 1853, Brahms completed a new piano sonata with which he had been struggling throughout the spring and summer of that year. Published as his Sonata No. 3, it would remain his single largest keyboard composition. It unites aspects of his two previous sonatas – the classical features of No. 1 with the romantic, fantasia-like character of No. 2 – and surpasses both of them in virtuosity and structural command.

Brahms’s collections of short piano pieces, issued as Op. 116 – 19, were among his final compositions for piano, and albeit a few of them provide brief glimpses of the old energy and fire, most are reflective, and deeply introspective in character. This was music that Brahms wrote to play for himself, or at the most to a few close friends. In fact, Clara Schumann was the first to see these in their manuscript form.

As an eleven-year-old in 1895, Wilhelm Backhaus met and performed for D'Albert, Grieg, Nikisch and Brahms, among others. Here was a pianist who shunned hectoring gestures of the late Romantic era for economy and purposefulness. "His facial expression always remained steady, showing an unceasing concentration on the sounds his hands were coaxing from the instrument with such concentrated energy. Everything lay in the act of playing, just as the preoccupation of a great painter or sculptor would be not with technique as such, but with craftsmanship - that is, skill not as an end in itself, but as a vehicle for the idea - giving pleasure to those who were able to watch and hear how a true master would execute even difficult passages effortlessly," writes Walter Frei. This 2-CD set brings together Backhaus's recordings with Karl Bohm and the Vienna Philharmonic of the two Brahms Piano Concertos - the first recorded in 1953, the second in 1967 shortly after the pianist's 83rd birthday! They are coupled with a generous selection of the composer's piano pieces, performed with the same nobility and breadth.

Jonas Vitaud is an acclaimed young French pianist, and this is his debut solo CD recording.

Includes all of Brahm’s final solo piano pieces, plus the Rhapsodies Op.79.

Jonas has been passionate about Brahms since an early age, and this CD is the culmination of a long-established desire to record Brahms’ music.

“A deep, resonant tone, the way he plays immediately captures the attention and works miracles” Alain Cochard, Diapason

A valuable sequel to our first Kissin Collection with early recordings. This set of five CD’s once more demonstrates the incredible maturity of Kissin’s playing at a tender age (from 12 to 19 years old). Here one can follow the development of the young pianist from being a child prodigy to an established artist.

The repertoire includes some of Mozart concertos together with the Moscow Virtuosi, the ensemble with which Kissin toured in 1988. Next to Prokofiev’s third Piano concerto –together with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra -, this set mainly contains some solo music, including two Inventions by the young pianist himself.

With Schubert’s Trout Quintet as a rare example of Kissin playing chamber music.

Recordings made between 1984 and 1990.