Brahms: Piano Concertos / Schiff (2-cd)

Andras Schiff, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Arnold Schoenberg called him a progressive: Johannes Brahms, who - with his musical language and formal world deeply rooted in the past - mined Bach and Beethoven, achieving a perfect structuring of the musical movement with which his works pointed far into the future. However, as András Schiff points out on the occasion of this recording of his two piano concertos with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Brahms' oeuvre has taken on an inappropriate weight over the years of continuously changing interpretation, which has tended to conceal the facture of the compositions rather than expose the ramifications of these subtly "developing variations" (as Schoenberg called the compositional process). Of course, such developments also have to do with changing performance conditions and changing social constellations, although it is not always easy to determine where the causal chain began. In any case, the growth of a global musical public with a correspondingly increasing noise level, the larger concert halls and the correspondingly more massive sound bodies with more robust instrumentation have also distorted the Brahms image, which today requires correction. For, according to András Schiff, Brahms' music is "transparent, sensitive, dynamically extremely differentiated and shaded". In order to make this clear, it is of course necessary to visualize the performance situation of that time and, as far as possible, to reconstruct it. The Meininger Hofkapelle, for example, one of the most progressive and respected orchestras in Europe at the time and always favoured by Brahms - his Fourth Symphony was premiered there by Brahms himself in 1885 - employed no more than 49 instrumentalists with nine first violins at the time. And the pianos of those days that Brahms preferred, primarily those of the Streicher, Bösendorfer and Blüthner firms, were also more transparent in their sound, richer in overtones and, not least, more easily appealing. András Schiff has already made use of period instruments on some previous recordings for ECM New Series, such as his two double albums of late piano works by Franz Schubert, for which he used a fortepiano by Franz Brodmann circa 1820. He has previously played the same grand piano on a double album of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, juxtaposing this version with another interpretation of the variation cycle on a Bechstein grand from 1921. When András Schiff now chooses the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment (playing without a conductor) with its "period instruments" as his partner for the recording of the two piano concertos by Johannes Brahms and plays himself on a historic grand piano from the Leipzig piano manufacturer Julius Blüthner from 1859, it is nothing less than an attempt to "reinterpret the works, to restore them, so to speak, to 'purify' the music" In the sometimes chamber-musical ductus of the recording, especially compelling in the last two movements of the B-flat major concerto op. 83, an interpretation emerges that approaches the original sound character, thereby uncovering those layers of the works that emphasize the dialogic principle between soloist and orchestra and thus also refutes the prejudice that the second piano concerto is a "symphony with obbligato piano". "My enthusiasm for Brahms goes back to early youth; it was the two piano concertos that mainly awakened this admiration," writes Sir András Schiff in the booklet accompanying this new recording. In the interplay with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the pianist creates, in these frequently performed works of the repertoire, a surprisingly transparent sound picture that leaves room for details in the voice leading and subtle sound shadings. The pianist's choice of instrument contributes significantly to this: a Blüthner grand piano built around 1859 in Leipzig, the year of the D minor concerto's premiere. The historically informed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, which often works without a conductor, exhibits the flexibility and poise of a chamber ensemble that is superbly responsive to the soloist's playing. Previous collaborations with the orchestra in a series of concerts have been critically acclaimed. As the Guardian wrote, "Brahms's First Piano Concerto sounded like new, thanks to the incisive playing of the OAE and the characterful phrasing of András Schiff." The musicians' shared desire to capture the experience led to this double album, recorded in London in December 2019. An extensive CD booklet contains texts by András Schiff and Peter Gülke in German and English.

Price: $39.98

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