Brahms: Piano concerti nos 1 & 2

[Nick Armstrong]

I like the First Piano Concerto. It's a very convincing essay in the Romantic "single extended movement" concertante genre that probably started with Weber's Konzertstück, and packs a great deal into its 20-minute span. What those two other bits of music they play after it are, and what they have to do with it, I have no idea.

>_>

[Nick Armstrong]

Zimmermann/Rattle, Cali? That does sound too ideal! :)

Give or take a few 'm' s and 'n' s, yes Bbm!

[Barbirollians]

I enjoy the First when listening to it but it was very striking hearing it in such close juxtaposition to the Second which just came across as much more interesting - and that is no reflection on the performers .

[Nick Armstrong]

I enjoy the First when listening to it but it was very striking hearing it in such close juxtaposition to the Second which just came across as much more interesting - and that is no reflection on the performers .

I envy you very much the chance to make that comparison. Should have got my act together!

A Prom repeat, perhaps...?

[Barbirollians]

I'm very suspicious of that 'classic' epithet. To my ears, Curzon and Szell are so slow in the Adagio that the notes barely cohere into a line. And I find myself wishing that in the second subject of the first movement, Gilels would just get on with playing the tune in a straightforward manner. The BaL 1st concerto winner was Freire/Chailly, which is magnificent in every way and superbly recorded to boot.

I found that Freire/Chailly set rather underwhelming .

[vinteuil]

It's the only work in which I've ever really liked a Zimerman recording, too -

... have you tried Zimerman in Chopin? I find him compelling

.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000001G8Q

[rauschwerk]

I found that Freire/Chailly set rather underwhelming .

That's incomprehensible to me!

[AlanE]

Like Barbirollians I was at the Sheffield City Hall concert (my first visit since regular attendances in the 1960s and 70s). I did feel that Sunwook Kim was having some difficulty in taming the City Hall's Steinway in the first movement of No. 1, though the subsequent movements sounded fine, and No. 2 after the interval was wonderfully engrossing, and a far more satisfying experience. Good to hear that both works have been recorded in the studio. Incidentally, I noticed that a gentleman sitting nearby had a large frying pan under his seat. I don't recall this happening in my visits of previous decades. Is this a new Northern concert-going tradition? He didn't use it on this occasion...

[Barbirollians]

That's incomprehensible to me!

Perhaps because the reviews had been such raves I was expecting more . I shall dig them out and listen again - at the time I thought good but not the be all and end all they were presented as being .

My absolute favourites apart from Gilels are the aforementioned Curzon/Szell , Rubinstein/Reinerand the Kovacevich/Sawallisch on EMI in No1 and Solomon and Richter/Leinsdorf in No2 .

[Barbirollians]

Like Barbirollians I was at the Sheffield City Hall concert (my first visit since regular attendances in the 1960s and 70s). I did feel that Sunwook Kim was having some difficulty in taming the City Hall's Steinway in the first movement of No. 1, though the subsequent movements sounded fine, and No. 2 after the interval was wonderfully engrossing, and a far more satisfying experience. Good to hear that both works have been recorded in the studio. Incidentally, I noticed that a gentleman sitting nearby had a large frying pan under his seat. I don't recall this happening in my visits of previous decades. Is this a new Northern concert-going tradition? He didn't use it on this occasion...

No frying pan under my seat ! Yes good to see on twitter that they have recorded the works as well .

[Nick Armstrong]

I found that Freire/Chailly set rather underwhelming .

Sorry rauschwerk, but I agree with Barbs here. Just didn't do it for me at all.

Incidentally, I noticed that a gentleman sitting nearby had a large frying pan under his seat. I don't recall this happening in my visits of previous decades. Is this a new Northern concert-going tradition? He didn't use it on this occasion...

Tha' never knows when it might come in handy tha' knows!

[Daniel]

There was a time when the idea of a desert island existence without the Brahms piano concerti would have been absurd. That's no longer true. But I always preferred the first concerto, I find it more unhinged, more thrilling, though the second certainly contains many beauties, voluptuous in a way. I always enjoyed the Arrau recording, but good recordings seem to abound.

When I was younger David Wilde came to our town to play both concertos on the same night, though at the time I didn't realise quite what a feat it was.

The best live performance of the First I ever heard was with Krystian Zimerman live at the RFH not long after he'd won the Chopin competition, an unprecedentedly electric experience for me in a classical concert hall (sadly there are few of his discs I've enjoyed particularly since, finding them somewhat over thought, with one very big exception of a disc he made playing and conducting the Chopin concerti with the specially formed Polish Festival Orchestra. It was revelatory to me at the time, and I tried to persuade everyone I knew who couldn't tolerate Chopin's way with an orchestra, to listen to it. I liked his early solo record of the Chopin Waltzes too.).

I found that Freire/Chailly set rather underwhelming .

I'm afraid I too didn't enjoy the Freire Brahms at all, finding it vapid and woefully underpowered. But obviously many do rate it very highly.

[Roslynmuse]

I've never got on with the second concerto, and always been incredibly moved by the first. The opening of the third movement of No 2 is the exceptional part for me (back in Dec 1982 I heard Peter Donohoe in Liverpool, very shortly after the Moscow Competition and that was a 'live-in-the-memory-forever' moment - in the same concert was an amazing Tchaikovsky 6 - Marek Janowski conducting - for once the audience didn't applaud after the third movement and there was real menace in the performance that I have never heard since). Backhaus playing No 2 on one of the Philips 100 Great Pianists discs is probably the most I've enjoyed it. But No 1 takes me to a different place altogether.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm the only person I know who prefers the First to the Second

I've never got on with the second concerto, and always been incredibly moved by the first. No 1 takes me to a different place altogether.

Alone no longer!

[Roslynmuse]

Alone no longer!