Brahms Op. 102

It may be hard for some to imagine that a performer whose mastery of baroque performance has established him as one of the most respected "authentic" interpreters could play Romantic music just as masterfully. But this recording, in which Anner Bylsma is joined by the incomparable Lambert Orkis, truly has everything a listener could desire, from transcendentally relaxed moments to intense vitality, from an affable, quirky sense of humour to masculine seriousness and aching sentiments.

The Brahms double concerto is simply in a class of its own with all musicians solely concerned with getting to the essence of the music and the way they play is simply sublime. I would also place this version of the Beethoven triple concerto above the celebrated EMI performance by Karajan, Oistrakh, Richter and Rostropovich which I also have. Fricsay and his soloists put the music first in a way true musicians know how to without having to resort to any gimmick of any kind . Here,tempi, orchestral dynamics and balance seem to happen in a most natural ,simple manner ,allowing the music to flow to the point of timelessness.

The music of Austrian composer Robert Fuchs attracted faint praise from Brahms, who supported Fuchs but remarked that he was "never really profound." Brahms was notoriously stingy with praise for other composers, however, and the comment is not quite fair. Yes, the Fuchs Clarinet Quintet in E flat major, Op. 102, recorded here is clearly modeled on the Brahms Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115, that accompanies it on the album, right down to the episodic series of variations that makes the finale.

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg into a Lutheran family, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria. His reputation and status as a composer are such that he is sometimes grouped with Johann Sebastian Bach and Ludwig van Beethoven as one of the "Three Bs" of music, a comment originally made by the nineteenth-century conductor Hans von Bülow.