Schumann: Presto passionato in G minor op.22

“Self-respecting pianophiles will already have most of these seminal recordings. But, compared with earlier issues, APR reveal a fuller, richer piano sound where every nuance is crystal clear and in a judiciously-enhanced ambience…APR's presentation,as usual, leaves its peers standing, fully worthy of the great artist enshrined in these magical recordings” Classic CD

“Horowitz's 1930-36 European recordings are beyond price, and so it's more than gratifying to have them permanently enshrined on APR rather than fleetingly available elsewhere. This is notably true of Horowitz's legendary, forever spine-tingling 1932 recording of the Liszt Sonata. Here, once more, is that uniquely teasing and heroic sorcery with octaves and passagework that blaze and skitter with a manic force and projection; an open defiance of all known musical and pianistic convention. Horowitz's virtuosity, particularly in his early days, remains a phenomenon, and hearing, for example, the vivamente elaboration of the principal theme or the octave uproar preceding the glassy, retrospective coda is to be reminded of qualities above and beyond the explicable. His way with the Chopin Mazurkas unites their outer dance elements and interior poetry with a mercurial brilliance and idiosyncrasy, and who but Horowitz could use his transcendental pianism to conjure a commedia dell'arte vision of such wit and caprice in Debussy's Etude, Pour les arpègescomposés? Of the previously unpublished recordings, the first movement from Chopin's Second Sonata is as macabre and tricky as ever, with a steady, oddly menacing tempo. Prokofiev's Toccata, on the other hand, is tossed off at a nail-biting speed, and not even a small but irritating cut, a wild, approximate flailing at the end and an added chord by way of compensation, can qualify the impact of such wizardry. In Rachmaninov's G minor Prelude, however, Horowitz's volatility gets the better of him. If Horowitz, in common with virtually every other pianist, was not equally convincing in every composer and was even 'a master of distortion' for some, he was a Merlin figure of an indelible, necromantic brio for all others.
Though expertly transferred, they do show their age somewhat, but nothing can lessen the impact of Horowitz's early charisma.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“His playing is chiefly enjoyable for its unmannered simplicity, its respect for the composer's own wishes.” Gramophone Magazine

“What I enjoyed most is Brautigam's vitality— vitality of imagination no less than of fingers. You are immediately gripped by his plunge into the Op.8 Allegro, with its arresting octave 'motto'. His mercurial fancy and ear for hidden melodic strands in the ensuing stream certainly makes nonsense of hasty dismissal of this work as mere old-style virtuoso note-spinning. Moreover, such is his unflagging impulse in the eight Novelletten that never for a moment are you tempted to accuse Schumann of overrepetitively patterned figuration.” Gramophone Magazine, June 1994