Period Brahms chamber music.

[MickyD]

For those enthusiasts of early pianos (and I know there are some!), I just thought I would flag up my latest discovery of a CD of the Brahms violin sonatas played by Ilia Korol (violin) and Natalia Grigorieva on an 1870 Streicher fortepiano. Good performances and a nice warm recorded sound. It's on Challenge Classics.

[amateur51]

Beautifully timed, MickyD!

Mr Dunkin'-Smiff will be putting another instalment into my bank account tomorrow

Ooooh just found it at £4.17 inc second-hand on Amazon

I think you recommended the Beethoven violin sonatas CD (Nos 5 & 9) by Immerseel & Schroeder to me too - it arrived last week & I've enjoyed in enormously - many thanks

[MickyD]

Glad to be of service - you got it at an excellent price, too. Glad to hear you enjoyed the Beethoven, but there is a three disc set of all the sonatas by the same artists at a very low price too. I'm very naughty, tempting you to part with all your cash!

More early piano suggestions to come, I hope.

[vinteuil]

Glad to hear you enjoyed the Beethoven, but there is a three disc set of all the sonatas by the same artists at a very low price too. .

Micky - of course I succumbed to your tempting blandishments re Brahms -Korol/Grigorieva...

I'm a bit baffled by your last quote - three disc set by whom (Korol/Grigorieva? Immerseel/Schroder?) of what (Beethoven? Brahms?) - pl help, I'm lost!

edit - or perhaps not - didn't read Am51's carefully - he got one CD of the three CD B'ven set...

as you were...

[MickyD]

Maybe the record companies should start paying me commission!

Vinteuil, I think you will thoroughly enjoy the Brahms disc, it came as a very pleasant surprise to me, finding it as I did reduced to a silly price in a shop here.

[Cellini]

Period Brahms chamber musak

I'm just asking this is the politest way (OK, that may be a shock to everyone) and out of real interest, but can Brahms sound like Brahms if played on period instruments? Can it have a full bodied lushious sound that I personally would want to hear?

All answers on a postcard please ...

[Bryn]

Well if you really want to hear Bowdlerized Brahms, fair enough, Cellini. I prefer the lively, spirited Brahms offered by the like of Mackerras and Norrington iin orchestral works. I have not heard any of his chamber works played on insruments set up as he would have known, and written for, them as yet, but fully expect to hear the weight of Brahms's supposed (more like imposed) 'heaviness' lifted from them.

[Cellini]

I knew I could rely on you Bryn, for a considered reply!!

However, Brahms wrote for strings and piano at a time when both instruments were (and had) mostly changed to what we know today. OK, no synthetic strings, but these in fact change the sound back more to pre 1850 than post 1850.

Don't forget that Kreisler knew Brahms, and played with him, and Kreisler already had (as some people describe it) a fairly continuos vibrato, and would have played into the string a lot. Brahm's chamber music has both "heavy" passages, and very light passages. Just look at the second A minor string quartet and there are huge passages at ff that require a lot of muscular sound, and in other movements (the third for example), passages of great speed and delicacy. You could also exchange Joachim for Kreisler and the string sound would have certainly still have been big, with no hostages taken.

I also do not equate "heaviness" with power and weight, or with a big rich sound.

If I were to suggest examples of more recent Brahms performances I would point towards the three piano trios played by Katchen, Suk and Starker as being pretty wonderful examples, and going further back, Kreisler's classically inspired performances of the D major violin concerto. For voice, dare I suggest the recorded performances of the Four Serious Songs performed by Fischer Dieskau, or the earlier recording of Ferrier's - in my opinion the two finest interpretations of vocal Brahms, with both weight and air.

[Bryn]

Well I suppose to be trulluy faithful to Brahms's character, one should use real catgut strings.

[Cellini]

Brahm's hated cats. He thought them gutless...

[Bryn]

Now, now, Cellini. You know the cat-killer stuff was all made up by that scoundrel Wagner, whose own mouse organ has since been further developed.

[Cellini]

My (computer) mouse has had all its organs removed and just shines a red light these days.

By the way, I started looking at other Monty Python things connected to your link, and then ended up with a scantilly clad girl doing push-ups ... I need more coffee now with an Irish manager thrown in ... and maybe a cold shower, do three Hale Maries and two hours of four octave scales.

[MickyD]

Gut strings in Brahms...I suggest the excellent CD of his sextets played on them by Hausmusik (Signum Classics) - a beautiful performance in my opinion.

[Vile Consort]

Surely it is an anachronism to describe an instrument built as late as 1870 as a fortepiano? Grove's entry for fortepiano says. "A term sometimes used today for the piano of the 18th and early 19th centuries in order to distinguish it from the 20th-century instrument". 1870 is hardly the early 19th century.

[MickyD]

Surely it is an anachronism to describe an instrument built as late as 1870 as a fortepiano? Grove's entry for fortepiano says. "A term sometimes used today for the piano of the 18th and early 19th centuries in order to distinguish it from the 20th-century instrument". 1870 is hardly the early 19th century.

This raises another interesting question for me regarding the nomenclature of early pianos - the French now use "pianoforte" as the name for an early piano. Confused? I can't tell my grand from my cottage upright.