This Sony-made 30CD classical music collection covers almost all classical music, from the early Baroque period represented by Bach to the schools of classical music by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms represent romantic, national and even modern musical schools led by Schubert, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Chopin, etc. representative, everything wonderful and vivid.
Tout le monde devrait connaitre certaines oeuvres classiques. Les requiems de Mozart ou de de Saint Sens en font parti, à mes yeux.
This set is a remarkable bargain, containing all of Brahms's solo piano music, including such chips from his workshop as cadenzas for other composers' concertos and a series of strictly mechanical piano studies that nobody will want to listen through. No matter. Idil Biret has a firm grasp of Brahms's idiom, and she plays with insight and passion throughout the set. Although she doesn't startle with her virtuosity, she handles the considerable technical demands of the music with great confidence.
The Monteverdi Choir excels during the a capella selections (Opus 42 and 104) due to their precision tuning and group sensitivity. Brahms's deep, romantic textures and mounds of sound are most vividly experienced when no instruments join in the blend. But in the accompanied pieces (Opus 92, 17, and the Liebeslieder Waltzes, Opus 52), the chorus sounds mechanical, metronomic. The Waltzes are pleasant, but the group can't find a personal identity to enliven the expressiveness of the material; they are simply a poetic mural. Still, this disk, chock full of music, is a lot of worthwhile Brahms for your bucks.
Masters of Classical Music is an informative and captivating guide to twenty of the most important works in music history. Outtakes from the original scores within the documentaries, assist the viewer by making it easier to follow the music and to overall comprehend the structure of the works. The viewer will travel back in time to experience the birth places of these compositions and will thereby gain insight into the lives of the composers whilst receiving a thorough introduction to the works.
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.
Soli Deo Gloria is proud to release the last instalment of its successful Brahms Symphony series which sees John Eliot Gardiner and his Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique explore the music of Johannes Brahms. This album is a celebration of the Fourth Symphony and the various pieces that contributed to its making.
One of the most popular concertos in the repertoire, Brahms’ Violin Concerto was completed in 1878 and dedicated to his friend Joseph Joachim, whose cadenza is heard on this recording. An essentially lyrical work, the Concerto includes a slow movement of great beauty, which gives way to a Hungarian-style finale of mounting excitement. Schumann’s thoughtful and poetic Violin Concerto was not performed until 1937. In spite of the enthusiastic advocacy of Yehudi Menuhin, who saw in the Concerto a link between Beethoven and Brahms, it remains to this day an underrated work with many passages of great beauty.
In 2019, when Alexandre Kantorow, at the age of 22, became the first French pianist to win the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky competition, his programme included no less than three works by Johannes Brahms. Two of these, Piano Sonata No. 2 and the Rhapsody in B minor, he went on to record for release on his previous, highly praised recital disc, which was awarded distinctions such as Gramophone’s Editor’s Choice, Diapason d’Or, and Choc de Classica. The Brahms interpretations won Kantorow particular praise – the Guardian (UK) described them as ‘magisterial’ while the website ResMusica placed his sonata ‘among the great reference recordings of the piece – if not the modern one.’ There is much to look forward to, then, when Kantorow releases an all-Brahms album with a playing time of no less than 85 minutes.
A classic returns! Carlos Kleiber reportedly suffers from such nerves that he rarely manages the fortitude necessary to commit his interpretive thoughts to disc. That makes every one of his all too few recordings special, and this is no exception. Kleiber's Brahms is straightforward, rock steady, and superbly played. There are many versions of this symphony that feature more emphatic highlights and individual features, but few have the sort of cumulative power that carries right up to the last note. This one does. Kleiber's architectural grasp is especially evident in the finale, which, as a series of variations over a repeated bass line, is in itself a type of musical architecture. An unforgettable experience.