Indebted 2

The two piano concertos by Johannes Brahms occupy an uncontested place in the pantheon of the greatest works of this genre. At the same time they play a unique role in the development of the concerto form in the 19th century, particularly in view of their uneven history of reception. When the young Brahms started out searching the limelight in the early 1850s with his first major composition he was facing a musical world torn apart by ideological wars about questions of form, harmony, and the role of programme music. In this decade, two irreconcilable parties emerged, on one side the so-called "conservatives" who centre was the Leipzig Conservatory (founded by Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy), with figureheads like Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim, on the other side the group of self-proclaimed "heralds of the future" led by Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner who would become known as the "Neudeutsche Schule" in 1859, a term coined by Franz Brendel.

A native of Munich, Karl Amadeus Hartmann (1905-1963) was without a shadow of a doubt the greatest symphonist in the Central European tradition since Bruckner and Mahler. The sketches and early versions of six of his eight symphonies had their origins in one of the darkest periods in world history – from 1933 to 1945 – when the Nazis were in power and Hartmann gradually withdrew completely from public life. This period, which culminated in Hartmann’s own ‘Innere Emigration’ (inner emigration), represented a decisive turning point in his creative development…

An air of inquiry suffuses Laura Marling's third album, a mood of experimentation as cerebral as it is playful. Opening song The Muse is like nothing she has released before: swaggering and brassy, with her voice pulling angular shapes across saloon-jazz piano and tight brush drums. Salinas and Rest in the Bed are like miniature western movies, with spit and sawdust in the guitar and banjo lines, melodrama in the backing vocals and Marling squinting at a relentless sun as her characters glare fate in the face. As on last year's I Speak Because I Can, Marling can sound curiously dispassionate, slurring the chorus of Don't Ask Me Why, maintaining a studied cool at the start of Sophia as she murmurs: "Where I have been lately is no concern of yours." But when Sophia unfurls into a glowing country romp, the distance between her and us suddenly shrinks – and the feeling is exhilarating.