Brahms: Intermezzo in B flat minor, Op. 117 No. 2

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.

The fifth volume in this much admired series offers another fascinating anthology. Of the 17 pianists, the two oldest are the long-lived Cornelia Rider-Possart (1865-1963) who can be heard on an exceptionally rare, non-commercial 1926 Berlin disc, in the first recording of Scriabin’s Etude, Op. 42, No. 3, and Etelka Freund (1879-1977), a pupil of Brahms, who performs one of his Intermezzos in 1952. Jean Melville, a distant relation of Arthur Sullivan, plays Valse arabesque in London in 1923, whilst Johana Harris who, together with her husband, the American composer Roy Harris, enjoyed a highly successful career, can be heard playing Frescobaldi in Los Angeles.

Marina A. Ledin & Victor Ledin, producers

2 CDs for the price of 1.

Michael Zadora is one of the most obscure pianists to have recorded prolifically in the 78rpm era. Only a handful of 78s have ever been reissued, and no LP or CD has ever been devoted to him. It would appear that his concert career was also not particularly high profile, yet from these recordings it seems he was a very significant artist. Perhaps the answer lies in his background. He was born in the New York of aristocratic Polish parents but returned to Europe to study and was a pupil of Leshetizky and Barth (who also taught Rubinstein). After the First World War he became a disciple of Busoni and indeed played for the great artist on his deathbed. Zadora seems to have been a rather reserved character, much more an intellectual than someone who enjoyed public performance and it is likely that family wealth allowed him the luxury of not have to pursue his career too aggressively. On the other hand, studio recording suited him very well indeed and he seems equally at home in the standard repertoire, such as Chopin, and in more rarefied material, such as the Busoni Sonatinas, where we are undoubtedly hearing an interpretation very close to that of the composer himself. Of particular interest are Zadora's own unusual transcriptions and also the works of 'Pietro Amadis' who was actually a pseudonym of the pianist.

These very rare recordings should be of particular interest to all lovers of historic piano playing.

This recital by Arthur Rubinstein (1887-1982) given in Nijmegen close to the Dutch border with Germany in 1963 can be considered an event of historical importance. Because of the pianist's refusal to play in Germany following the War, Rubinstein decided to give a concert as close to the border as feasible, which not surprisingly attracted a great deal of press attention at the time and because it was attended by many German music lovers who travelled from all over the Germany to see him.

The recording made by the WDR in Cologne has never been available before either as a pirate or commercially. This is it's first ever release.

The programme is a distillation from the full recital lasting over 90 minutes and has been overseen by the Rubinstein family.

The titles are familiar to any Rubinstein collector but are given added vibrancy and presence by the excitement of the event caught live in excellent sound. This is far removed from the sometimes more careful Rubinstein of the recording studio.