Brahms 2nd piano concerto

[BBMmk2]

Do you maybe mean Pollini/Abbado rather than Tirimo (who recorded the Brahms concertos with - I think - Yoel Levi and Sanderling)?

As for favourite versions of No. 2, Richter/Leinsdorf, Freire/Chailly, Gilels/Reiner and Gilels/Jochum are all performances I like very much. Solomon/Dobrowen is another I would not want to be without.

Indeed yes, Pollini/Abbado. Have'nt heard these yet.My all time favourite is Gilels/Jochum.

[kea]

For the longest time I had no idea how the concerto ended, as I would invariably fall asleep somewhere in the fourth movement (or sometimes the third).

I've now collected quite a few performances and also learned how the end goes but honestly have to say I still mentally tune out after the first movement—which, to be fair, I've always found wonderful. No idea why as I'm normally a Brahms enthusiast and there doesn't seem on the surface to be anything wrong with the music.

[jayne lee wilson]

I've recently been listening to this.... live from Carnegie Hall February 1948.... (Pristine flac download 16/44.1/playback WAVs, Audirvana+Integer2)





Despite some sonic problems - acetate surface noise a little higher than average for the time, a tendency to some indistinctness at lower levels, occasional peak distortion - you can easily appreciate that miraculous Toscaninian ability to switch from power and energy to lightness and grace, and Horowitz's astonishing, almost bar-to-bar chameleonic rubato which is an essential part of his individualistic expression of the work's passing moods. Toscanini's effortless orchestral response not only keeps up but seems to inspire the soloist in itself.

Listening to various recordings from the 1930s to the 1950s - Knappertsbusch, Furtwänger, Toscanini - has revealed to me why I've so often felt detached from more recent recordings of Brahms, Beethoven, Bruckner and others: that very individuality that needs rubato to bring the music to life as a personal emotional involvement, in the moment, instead of a sense of detached observation or reverence, even if energetically and dynamically responsive. I'd love to hear younger conductors and soloists doing something similar more often, but perhaps it really is lost for ever...

...OK, just heard the Sunwook Kim/Elder performance of the Brahms B flat's first movement via Qobuz HiFi lossless.... no balance problems here, well enough played and recorded, each to her own as ever; but how slow, stately, unvarying and complacent it sounds after Horowitz/Toscanini, even if the comparison to that mercurial one-off may seem a little unfair. I was soon losing interest, that old familiar feeling of knowing how the rest is going to go, far too soon....
Timings tell you lot here: 18'56 for Kim, 16'26 for Horowitz. Going back to the opening in the latter you're instantly gripped by the urgency, the drama and pathos of the first solo - then Toscanini thrillingly charges in with his lithe leonine orchestra at their finest!
I was genuinely shocked at just how superior it sounds....
(Overall timings 50'54 to 44'23!).

You can try the allegro non troppo in mp3 here... (Andrew Rose tells me that lossless streaming will be available at Pristine later this year...)

https://www.pristineclassical.com/co...oducts/pasc092

.(nb.....the download sounds considerably sweeter)

[Barbirollians]

I should also throw in the Angelich/Jarvi as a fine modern recording.

[Ferretfancy]

I think we can agree that quite a few pianists play it rather well.

[richardfinegold]

[QUOTE=jayne lee wilson;623212]

Listening to various recordings from the 1930s to the 1950s - Knappertsbusch, Furtwänger, Toscanini - has revealed to me why I've so often felt detached from more recent recordings of Brahms, Beethoven, Bruckner and others: that very individuality that needs rubato to bring the music to life as a personal emotional involvement, in the moment, instead of a sense of detached observation or reverence, even if energetically and dynamically responsive. I'd love to hear younger conductors and soloists doing something similar more often, but perhaps it really is lost for ever...

...OK, just heard the Sunwook Kim/Elder performance of the Brahms B flat's first movement via Qobuz HiFi lossless.... no balance problems here, well enough played and recorded, each to her own as ever; but how slow, stately, unvarying and complacent it sounds after Horowitz/Toscanini, even if the comparison to that mercurial one-off may seem a little unfair. I was soon losing interest, that old familiar feeling of knowing how the rest is going to go, far too soon....


Well put. I find that for the Romantic Composers--primarily I'm thinking of Chopin, Brahms, and Rachmaninov--the more removed in time that the performers are from the era, the less vital the recorded interpretations. Jlw concentrates on the rubato, and that is the largest part of it, but I would generalize it to say that the whole rhetoric and architecture of the pieces seem to progressively become lost over time. I find it increasingly difficult to listen to any performer than the Composer in the Rach pcs, and rarely any recording made after the 1960s. Brahms PCs increasingly are bloated and distended and less vital once one gets past the early stereo era. And I would rather hear Chopin played by Hoffman or Cortot or Rach than by the latest wunderkind competition winner.
Bruckner and Mahler are somewhat special cases, because their music was not fully appreciated for a few generations, and the Orchestras of yesteryear were not as familiar with their idiom when it was played

[BBMmk2]

Heard the Pollini/BPO/Abbado recording, now. Very impressed.