Christian Thielemann Brahms

Maurizio Pollini's 2011 concert recording of Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor is an important document because it not only captures his return to playing with the esteemed Staatskapelle Dresden (his first performance with the group since 1986), and his first collaboration with conductor Christian Thielemann, but it presents the very work the pianist played at his Staatskapelle debut in 1976. All of this background is helpful to know, to understand the significance Deutsche Grammophon attaches to this release, even at the risk of offering a CD that runs just over 45 minutes, without any filler for added value.

Four-time Grammy winner Renee Fleming presents her first full-length Lieder album in almost two decades, featuring a selection of favorite songs from Brahms, Schumann, and Mahler, including Brahm's "Lullaby" and a breathtaking performance of Mahler's Rückert Lieder with Christian Thielemann and the Munich Philharmonic.

After Igor Levit, Christian Thielemann, and the Vienna Philharmonic performed Brahms’ First Piano Concerto at Vienna’s famous Musikverein in April 2024 the Viennese newspaper The Standard wrote: “During these fifty minutes, an irresistible dose of emotion was conveyed – but at the same time the sophisticated structure of Brahms’ masterpiece remained crystal clear.” Four months earlier after their performance of the Second Piano Concerto, the Austrian newspaper Die Presse had declared that “Igor Levit sets a new gold standard for Brahms.”

Maurizio Pollini's second Deutsche Grammophon release with Christian Thielemann and the Staatskapelle Dresden is a live concert recording of Johannes Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, a fitting follow-up to his successful 2011 CD of the Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor. That recording marked Pollini's triumphant return to Dresden, but this 2013 recording is less about the significance of the concert and more about the consolidation of Pollini's working relationship with Thielemann and the orchestra.

In the autumn of 1872 Anton Bruckner – court organist, university professor and a late developer as a composer – had the opportunity to present his Second Symphony to the Vienna Philharmonic. But its conductor Otto Dessoff, who only a few years later was to conduct the world première of Brahms’s First Symphony and who had arranged a run-through of several new works, including Bruckner’s Second, dismissed the symphony as “impossible” and even as pure “nonsense”, a view contested by a number of other members of the orchestra who raised their voices in its defence. And indeed the Vienna Philharmonic did finally perform the symphony at a public concert a year later to mark the official ending of the Vienna World Fair on 26 October 1873 – without Dessoff. Bruckner himself con- ducted the performance, which was financed by a noble patron – at the previous year’s ill-starred rehearsal he had only been allowed to indicate the tempi. “First rejection” he had noted in his diary at that time, as if it was already obvious to him that this was not to be his last such rejection.

In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the greatest media event in classical music, Sony Classical released in 2015 a complete edition of all the works ever played at the Wiener Philharmoniker’s New Year’s Concerts. Performed in the “Golden Hall” of the Musikverein between 1941 and 2015, the iconic live performances were issued for the first time in a single box set of 23 CDs. Now, in 2020, this edition will be available as a 26-CD extended version, with all the new repertoire from the last five years compiled on three additional CDs.

Johannes Brahms - Klavierkonzerte Nr. 1 & 2 - Maurizio Pollini (2016) {2CD Set Deutsche Grammophon}
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Classical / Romantic / Concerto / Piano

Maurizio Pollini, still one of the undisputed stars of the piano when these performances were recorded in 2011 and 2014, had already recorded the Brahms concertos several times before. One might expect a kind of late-life summation, but this is nothing of the sort. Instead, Pollini seems energized by the chance at an unusual pianist-conductor interaction, something arguably more important with Brahms than with any other composer: the motivic web can be knitted in various ways. Pollini's lithe elegance, little diminished in his late sixties, stands in sharp contrast to the big-boned dramatics of Christian Thielemann, leading the venerable Staatskapelle Dresden, and many passages sound totally novel.