Brahms op 105

Brahms had already decided to retire as a composer when, on a journey to Meiningen in 1891, he was inspired and challenged by clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld’s beautiful playing. The two Sonatas, Op. 120 are part of a late flowering that resulted in some of Brahms’s finest chamber music. Brahms himself explored these pieces beyond the clarinet, and Karl-Heinz Schütz’s arrangements are based on the composer’s own alternative versions, seeking out the ideal of two equally matched instruments in constant dialogue. Also included is a selection of ‘songs without words’, further expanding the flute repertoire with arrangements of these much-loved Lieder.

Perfectly judged performances, intelligently planned recitals, informative booklet notes and, throughout, accompaniments from a true master of the art: this final release in the songs of Brahms epitomizes all the familiar virtues which have distinguished the series.

Jennifer Pike, who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition at the tender age of 12, appears to have survived the perils of prodigyhood and entered her early twenties with musical intelligence intact. Here she offers a terrific program of music from the middle of the 19th century; all of it is abstract, but it brings vividly to mind the crucial trio of creative figures who met in the early 1850s: the ailing Robert Schumann, his musically frustrated wife Clara, and the young Johannes Brahms, mooning over the latter.

Jennifer Pike, who won the BBC Young Musician of the Year competition at the tender age of 12, appears to have survived the perils of prodigyhood and entered her early twenties with musical intelligence intact. Here she offers a terrific program of music from the middle of the 19th century; all of it is abstract, but it brings vividly to mind the crucial trio of creative figures who met in the early 1850s: the ailing Robert Schumann, his musically frustrated wife Clara, and the young Johannes Brahms, mooning over the latter. The Brahms Violin Sonata No. 1, Op. 78, was written some years after that, but it seems to hark back to that time, not least in its dedication to Felix Schumann, Robert and Clara Schumann's youngest child.

This is the third period-instrument recording of Brahms’s violin sonatas I’ve heard, and by far the most illuminating. I admire the delicacy of Natalia Grigorieva and Ilia Korol’s playing on Challenge Classics, though not their choppy phrasing. Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melnikov are fleet, flexible and at times thrilling in their abandon, even if, in his ardour, Melnikov occasionally overwhelms his partner. Indeed, theirs are performances for the concert hall.

Brahms & Schumann: Lieder sees Dame Ann Murray, one of the great vocal artists of the past decades, return to the recording studio to perform a personal selection of Lieder. Brahms & Schumann: Lieder, Ann’s first solo album in over a decade, will be her final Lieder recording and a fitting way to draw her long and distinguished recording career to a close.