Brahms: Piano Concerto No 2 / Litton, Hamelin
Label: Hyperion Catalog: SACDA67550 Format: SACD This disc features Marc-André Hamelin and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Litton in a compelling account of Brahm's huge Piano Concerto No.2. This work blends the principles of symphony and concerto in a manner that invokes chamber music, while also representing the culmination of everything that Brahms had learned as a lifelong connoisseur of pianistic technique. Cast in four large movements, this concerto can be seen as a kind of pianistic autobiography, from the young virtuoso, through the D minor anguish of the scherzo and the self-communing chamber-like slow movement, to the Hungarian rhythms of the more ebullient song-and-dance finale. The Four Piano Pieces Op.119 written in the composer's final years - three ravishingly inward and autumnal Intermezzi offset by a virile and heroic Rhapsodie - complete this rounded portrait of the composer. |