Natalya Mnatsakanyan Ruben Kosemyan Plays Brahms Complete Sonatas & Scherzo

This album features two major artists, past and present: Johannes Brahms and Arabella Steinbacher. However, even the best of artists have their less than perfect moments or works. These three sonatas, as played hereby Steinbacher and Kulek, come across as less exciting, lesser works by Brahms. The Sonata No. 1 sounds rather anemic as it begins (partly because of the recording quality), but Steinbacher chooses to play without much fullness or vibrato, even though she is playing a Stradivarius.

Brahms’s two sonatas for clarinet and piano, Op 120, composed in 1894, were followed only by the four Serious Songs and a set of organ chorale preludes (some of which may have been written at earlier times). His farewell to chamber music was also his farewell gift to the clarinet.

This release by Norwegian cellist Jonathan Aasgaard (the principal cellist of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) and British pianist Martin Roscoe purports to be a complete recording of Brahms' music for cello and piano. In fact it's padded with quite a few other things that have little or nothing to do with Brahms other than the fact that he composed the original music.

This release by Norwegian cellist Jonathan Aasgaard (the principal cellist of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra) and British pianist Martin Roscoe purports to be a complete recording of Brahms' music for cello and piano. In fact it's padded with quite a few other things that have little or nothing to do with Brahms other than the fact that he composed the original music.

Thoughtful, sensitive playing in slow movements, lively tempi in allegros, characteristic musicianship plus spontaneity combine to make these recordings highly recommendable throughout…

Six years after their acclaimed disc devoted to Mendelssohn's works for cello and piano, Christian Poltera and Ronald Brautigam now tackle the two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms, two central works in the repertoire, unquestionably the most important since those by Beethoven. The First Cello Sonata was composed between 1862 and 1865 when Brahms was in his thirties. He seemed intent on showcasing the lyricism of an instrument that is often compared to the human voice.

Member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, principal of the New World Symphony, and partner of Renée Fleming on the CD Bel Canto, clarinetist Todd Levy is hot stuff. Actually and more accurately, Todd Levy is mellow stuff – rich, lush, full, deep, and sweet stuff. In this, his first solo disc, Levy takes on four of the most Romantic works in the clarinet repertoire, that's Romantic with both an upper and a lower case R: Brahms' two late sonatas in F minor and E flat major plus Schumann's Fantasy Pieces and, naturally, his Romances. It's a match made in heaven: Levy wraps himself around each piece like a coat in late autumn, playing with a cantabile tone and a flawless technique.

Friends of long standing as well as regular partners in chamber music, Michael Collins and Stephen Hough bring their combined musical insights and expertise to bear on Johannes Brahms’s sonatas for clarinet and piano. Together with the composer’s trio for clarinet, cello and piano and clarinet quintet, the sonatas are among the most treasured works in the repertoire of the instrument – but it is partly down to good luck that we have them at all. When Brahms in 1891 heard the clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, principal clarinet of the Meiningen Court Orchestra, he had already announced his retirement. He was enraptured by Mühlfeld’s playing and its vocal qualities, however, and made a ‘comeback’: during the following couple of years he composed all four of his clarinet works.