Piano Street's Classical Piano News

In February 2013 at the invitation of star conductor Christian Thielemann, the legendary Italian pianist Maurizio Pollini returned after almost 25 years to the Dresden Staatskapelle and gave his first performance at the Dresden Semperoper ever. The celebrated, 70-year-old pianist played Brahms’ 1st Piano Concerto in D minor, Op. 15.

The interpretation in this unforgettable ARTE broadcast was honored by the German Phono Academy with the “Echo Klassik 2012” in the category “Concert Recording of the Year – piano”.

For those who remember the Abbado/Pollini collaboration from 1999 and the Böhm/Pollini from the 1980s in that same work, the Böhm is considered the best in terms of balancing heroic pianism and confessional insight. The new Thielemann collaboration however, displays superior balance and tempi, richness of detail and greater substance in the piano part, often accomplished by Pollini´s dynamically supportive and active left hand structures.

Brahms originally conceived the first piano concerto as his first major work for orchestra, what would have been his first symphony. After that proved unsatisfactory, he began molding it into a sonata for two pianos. Brahms ultimately decided that he had not sufficiently mastered the nuances of orchestral colour to sustain a symphony, and instead relied on his skills as a pianist and composer for the piano to complete the work as a concerto. It was first performed on January 22, 1859, in Hannover, Germany, when Brahms was just 25 years old. Five days later, in Leipzig, an unenthusiastic audience hissed at the concerto, while critics savaged it, labelling it “perfectly unorthodox, banal and horrid”. In a letter to his close personal friend, the renowned violinist Joseph Joachim, Brahms stated, “I am only experimenting and feeling my way”, adding sadly, “all the same, the hissing was rather too much”. Today it is considered one of the finest and most powerful concerto compositions of the Romantic period.

Brahms’ biographers often note that the first sketches for the dramatic opening movement followed quickly on the heels of the 1854 suicide attempt of the composer’s dear friend and mentor, Robert Schumann, an event which caused great anguish for Brahms.

Chandos Records is presently recording the complete Chopin with Louis Lortie, the complete Brahms with Barry Douglas and the complete Haydn and Beethoven sonatas with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet. From these ambitious projects we recommend two recent albums which gained critical acclaim.

Louis Lortie plays Chopin

NEW! Click the album cover to listen to the complete album:

(This is a new feature available for Gold members of pianostreet.com)

The first is volume 2 in Chandos’ series of solo piano works by Chopin, played by the French-Canadian pianist Louis Lortie.
Recording exclusively for Chandos, Lortie is recognised as one of the finest interpreters of Chopin today. He first recorded Chopin’s Etudes for Chandos more than twenty years ago; the disc was named as one of the ’50 great performances by superlative pianists’ by BBC Music. Volume 1 of his current Chopin series also has received excellent reviews: the magazine Pianist wrote: “He is a pianist of our time when it comes to speed, energy and an unfussy approach to Chopin. His way of playing is like a sharply cut steel sculpture, super elegant and with not one single smudge.”
And in the words of International Piano: “These are full-blooded and eloquent performances, an auspicious start to what looks likely to become one of the finest of Chopin surveys.”

Barry Douglas plays Brahms’ Complete Works for Solo Piano

NEW! Click the album cover to listen to the complete album:

(This is a new feature available for Gold members of pianostreet.com)

Barry Douglas’ new Brahms series for Chandos has, rather than grouping pieces in their entire published sets as is the recording norm, instead chosen to mix things up. So, an intermezzo from one book might sit next to a capriccio from another. The series also marks the first major project of the internationally acclaimed pianist as an exclusive Chandos artist.
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.
Listen to samples at All Music

“…a typically robust, strongly characterised performance.
— Guardian

“Scrupulous articulation to dynamics give energy and drama to the final cumulative momentum — his cycle will surely be fascinating to follow as it unfolds.”
— Gramophone

Louis Lortie plays Chopin – Etude Op. 10 no. 3
Barry Douglas plays Brahms – Intermezzo Op. 116 No. 4
Interview with Barry Douglas
Bonus clip: Danny Boy goes Brahms (with Barry)

A piano score of the recently rediscovered piano piece by Johannes Brahms, Albumblatt in A minor, has been published in an Urtext edition by Piano Street today.

Free sheet music to download and print:
Brahms – Albumblatt in A minor

(File updated May 27, now inlcuding fingering and work comments.)

Listen:

András Schiff plays “Albumblatt” in A minor by Johannes Brahms

The theme reused in the Scherzo of Brahms’ Horn Trio

The $158,500 album

The piece was discovered by the auction house Doyle of New York City, where the “Album Amicorum of Arnold Wehner” was sold for $158,500 in April last year.
The album belonged to Wehner who was director of music at Göttingen in the 1850s and contains musical contributions and quotations from important contemporary composers and musicians including Brahms, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Liszt.
Musicologists believe that Brahms wrote this piano piece in Arnold Wehner’s album in June of 1853, when he and his friend Edouard Remenyi were visiting Göttingen.

Recycled theme

The theme was also used by Brahms in the Scherzo’s trio section in his trio for piano, violin and French horn, composed 12 years later. The new finding is however not a brief sketch but a finished manuscript of a complete piano piece, clearly written and including performance markings.

Who was first?

The album was catalogued and described in Doyle New York’s sale catalogue of April 20th 2011 with the assistance of Dr. Michael Struck of the Johannes Brahms Gesamtausgabe, Kiel. However, earlier this month BBC claimed that conductor and musicologist Christopher Hogwood discovered the piece and that the world premiere was to be performed by András Schiff in a broadcast on January 21. Although Hogwood’s discovery appeared to be slightly misleading and the piece had already been publicly performed, the short video by BBC including an interesting discussion and samples of Schiff’s masterful performance is well worth watching:
BBC Radio 3: András Schiff plays a lost work by Johannes Brahms

The new edition

A scanned copy of the manuscript has been online on Doyle New York as part of their April 2011 catalog, a transcription of it appeared on IMSLP this week and the piece will be included in Bärenreiter’s new edition of Brahms’ Horn Trio to be released in February.
Piano Street’s new urtext score may very well be the first officially published edition of this wonderful little piece. Regardless, we are happy to share it with the piano playing world for free to play and enjoy!

Please share it with your friends by posting the following link:
http://www.pianostreet.com/albumblatt
…and post your comments about the piece below!

Two of Johannes Brahms’ most popular late piano pieces are now available as Urtext scores from Piano Street’s sheet music library. Recordings, of the two pieces performed by Henrik Sandback, have also been added.

Intermezzo in E-flat Major, Opus 117 No. 1

The three Intermezzi Op. 117 are probably the most well-known and best-loved of Brahms’s late piano pieces.
The composer described these pieces, all three of which are marked Andante, “lullabies to my sorrows”.  They were inspired by a Scottish poem from Herder´s Volkslieder, Lady Anne Bothwell’s Lament, and bear this inscription:
Schlaf sanft mein Kind, schlaf sanft und Schön!/Mich dauert´s sehr, dich weinen sehn. (Sleep softly my child, sleep softly and well!/It hurts my heart to see you weeping.)

Intermezzo in A Major, Opus 118 No. 2

The second piece of Op. 118 is one of Brahms’s most beloved creations, a deeply lyrical and moving nocturne. The opus, consisting of six pieces, were sent as a gift to Clara Schumann immediately upon their completion. Brahms’ biographer Jan Swafford has surmised: “he may have composed the pieces to try and keep Clara Schumann going in body and soul. Since she could only play a few minutes at a time now, and because she loved these miniatures so deeply, maybe they did keep her alive.”

Between 1981 and 1984 Leonard Bernstein recorded nearly all of Brahms´s orchestral works with the Wiener Philharmoniker to honor the 150th anniversary of the composer´s birth in 1983. As an example of the unique Zimerman/Bernstein collaboration, here´s the second movement of the second Piano Concerto in B flat major Op. 83:

The outstanding Polish pianist, Krystian Zimerman won 1st prize at the international Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in Warszaw in 1975, which launched his international career. Krystian Zimerman then played with great success in Munich, London, Paris and Vienna. In 1976 he was soloist with the Berliner Philharmoniker. He made his first American appearance in 1978, and subsequently toured throughout the world to great critical acclaim. He has performed with many exceptional orchestras and worked with some of the world’s most outstanding conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Herbert von Karajan, Bernard Haitink, Seiji Ozawa, Lorin Maazel, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, André Previn, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, and Simon Rattle.

Victory in a significant competition does not always guarantee a blooming professional career. In fact, as the number of competitions constantly expands, instances of this are becoming increasingly rare. Publicly expressing his reluctance to piano competitions and the increasing standardisation of the performer ideals, Krystian Zimerman’s actions are deeply thought out and carefully planned. As a result, they are fewer and farther between. Zimerman generally avoids the limelight, limits the number of live performances he gives and records relatively infrequently. As a result, each artistic endeavor he decides upon is awaited eagerly and closely watched. On April 27, Zimerman created a furor in his debut at Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles when he announced this would be his last performance in America because of the nation’s military policies overseas:

Article, Los Angeles Times