In these love songs in waltz style for chorus or solo voices accompanied by piano four hands, Brahms freely indulged his taste for Viennese folk music. The RIAS Kammerchor Berlin instills a wonderful inner life in these musical landscapes, sometimes cheerful, sometimes melancholy, punctuated here by a selection from the Hungarian Dances - also eminently popular in their inspiration.
Composed between 1865 and 1868, Brahms's Ein deutsches Requiem has become a repertoire staple for choirs around the world, amateur and professional alike, possibly because it relies so much more on the choir than it's soloists to convey the texts than other works. Brahms chose not to set the Requiem Mass, but rather a collection of biblical texts of his own selection, taken from the Lutheran Bible (hence the 'deutsches'). Rather than a prayer for the dead, Brahms's concern is much more with offering comfort to the bereaved, still on earth. When challenged about the lack of a single reference to Christ in the entire work, Brahms responded, 'I would gladly omit even the word German and simply put Human'. This adds credence to the view that he saw the work in an entirely humanist way, and that the religious overtones of the title and text selection are much more a result of the avowedly Christian culture of his times than a specific decision to express personal belief. Edward Gardner and his Bergen forces are joined by the soloists Johanna Wallroth and Brian Mulligan in this exciting new recording.
Robert Schumann composed the Op. 47 Piano Quartet in E flat major in his so-called ‘chamber music year’ of 1842, immediately after finishing the famous piano quintet in the same key. Despite the proximity in time and tonality, there are clear differences between the two works: the quintet tends more towards a concertante dialogue between the piano and string quartet while the quartet favours equality between the four parts – even if the cello has something of a leading role among the strings. Some ten years later, the young Johannes Brahms was entrusted with the task of making a piano four-hands arrangement of the quartet, and it is quite possible that this contact with Schumann’s chamber music for piano and strings opened his eyes to the potential of the genre. In any case, with its almost inexhaustible motivic abundance and captivating energy Brahms’s Piano Quintet in F minor, Op.34, is one of the most often performed works for these forces. Completed in 1864 it had actually started off as a string quintet which Brahms first reworked as a sonata for two pianos before arriving at the final scoring. Performing these two central works in 19th century chamber music is Yevgeny Sudbin and an international group of eminent string players consisting of violinists Hrachya Avanesyan and Boris Brovtsyn, violist Diemut Poppen and cellist Alexander Chaushian.
REVIEW:
There’s no lack of personalities on display here. Here we have a band of equals. The players are thrillingly daring in the Scherzo of the Schumann, taken at breakneck tempo with fizzing accents, but though you suspect that Sudbin is the ringleader here, there’s plenty of give and take within the group.
Christian Euler, together with his piano partner Paul Rivinius, present two Brahmsian masterpieces which foreshadow the fin de siecle and contrast these with Schumann's "Marchenbilder", whose fairytale-like character is reflected in the music's imaginative narrative gesture, transporting the listener into an enchanting world full of magic, poetry and longing.
Mendelssohn: Lieder ohne Worte, Books 5-8 / Brautigam
BIS
SACD · 1 disc
$21.99Jun 10, 2016
Felix Mendelssohn had no idea that when he presented his sister Fanny with a “song without words” for her birthday, that he was inventing his own genre. He went on to compose a great number of these Lieder ohne Worte. These works became incredibly popular among pianists, and among audiences. In the words of Mendelssohn himself, “The music I love expresses ideas that are not too vague to be captured in words, but on the contrary too precise.” Pianist Ronald Brautigam performs these works on a piano copied by Paul McNulty after an Ignaz Pleyel 1830 model.
Solstice Ritual, Homage to Varesse and Ravel for fourteen vi
Nimbus
Book
$129.99Mar 20, 2026
Over the past forty-five years, I have composed many works whose titles point to natural and celestial radiances: galaxy, star, sun, earth, moon, sky, light, dawn, illumination, equinox, summer, etc. One central metaphor of my life's creative work is that of light refracting. Of interest to me, for my work, is to build, sculpt, and compose clean, clear, transparent, translucent, luminous, radiant, shining, resounding, and resonant musical materials. Solstice Ritual for 14 virtuosi shares many of these preoccupations. Solstice Ritual also pays homage to the composers Edgard Varèse and Maurice Ravel, and it celebrates their imagination, joy, love, vitality, soul, energy, great chords and rich chord progressions, resonant orchestrations, tight big-band-like splash-chords, and the sheer beating-heart inner life of their music. I love all of their compositions, and to give just two examples among many, Varèse's percussion writing and Ravel's gorgeous orchestrations have been longstanding sources of inspiration. - Augusta Read Thomas
Bebop Riddle V is by turns sprightly, spry, energetic, and spirited. In this work, Thomas crafted animated, travelling, flexible, versatile, changing, fluid, and buoyant sonic adventures, a bit like two hummingbirds darting around a field of wildflowers. Iridescent, bold, and scintillating, the carefully sculpted and fashioned musical materials of Bebop Riddle V are agile and vivacious, and their flexibility allows pathways to braid harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal elements that are constantly transformed - variously whimsical, jazzy and bebop-like, layered, and reverberating, with lyrical resonance, pirouettes, fulcrum points, and vitality. The two equally virtuosic parts - requiring highly characterized dynamics and articulations, as well as fast fingering changes - sparkle forth for 8 minutes, unfolding fourteen continuously developing phrases, each lasting between 15 and 50 seconds. The music is organic and concerned with transformations and connections at every level. Poetically speaking, this composition has a kind of fractal quality to it - each part has a similar flair, twirl, whirl, pivot, and character as the whole. There are seven additional alternative instrumentation versions for Bebop Riddle V which can be purchased separately.
Bebop Riddle V is by turns sprightly, spry, energetic, and spirited. In this work, Thomas crafted animated, travelling, flexible, versatile, changing, fluid, and buoyant sonic adventures, a bit like two hummingbirds darting around a field of wildflowers. Iridescent, bold, and scintillating, the carefully sculpted and fashioned musical materials of Bebop Riddle V are agile and vivacious, and their flexibility allows pathways to braid harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal elements that are constantly transformed - variously whimsical, jazzy and bebop-like, layered, and reverberating, with lyrical resonance, pirouettes, fulcrum points, and vitality. The two equally virtuosic parts - requiring highly characterized dynamics and articulations, as well as fast fingering changes - sparkle forth for 8 minutes, unfolding fourteen continuously developing phrases, each lasting between 15 and 50 seconds. The music is organic and concerned with transformations and connections at every level. Poetically speaking, this composition has a kind of fractal quality to it - each part has a similar flair, twirl, whirl, pivot, and character as the whole. There are seven additional alternative instrumentation versions for Bebop Riddle V which can be purchased separately.
Bebop Riddle V is by turns sprightly, spry, energetic, and spirited. In this work, Thomas crafted animated, travelling, flexible, versatile, changing, fluid, and buoyant sonic adventures, a bit like two hummingbirds darting around a field of wildflowers. Iridescent, bold, and scintillating, the carefully sculpted and fashioned musical materials of Bebop Riddle V are agile and vivacious, and their flexibility allows pathways to braid harmonic, rhythmic, and contrapuntal elements that are constantly transformed - variously whimsical, jazzy and bebop-like, layered, and reverberating, with lyrical resonance, pirouettes, fulcrum points, and vitality. The two equally virtuosic parts - requiring highly characterized dynamics and articulations, as well as fast fingering changes - sparkle forth for 8 minutes, unfolding fourteen continuously developing phrases, each lasting between 15 and 50 seconds. The music is organic and concerned with transformations and connections at every level. Poetically speaking, this composition has a kind of fractal quality to it - each part has a similar flair, twirl, whirl, pivot, and character as the whole. There are seven additional alternative instrumentation versions for Bebop Riddle V which can be purchased separately.
Augusta read thomas :rainbow bridge to paradise (2016)For Solo ViolaDuration: c. 4½ minutesFormat: 8-page A4 saddle stitched sheet musicAlso available for solo violin (NMP1043) and solo cello (NMP1045)“Rainbow Bridge to Paradise starts at the very bottom note of the cello, in the deep, rich, elegant tones of the instrument and traverses to the very bright, clear, clean, optimistic top register of the instrument. This music’s vibrant, expressive and distinct ‘picture’ is one of an ascent from earth to paradise across a colorful bridge.” Augusta Read Thomas
Brahms: Piano Concerto 2, Tragic Overture / Gilels, Reiner
RCA
CD · 1 disc
$17.99Jun 15, 2007
"Gilels made two recordings of this concerto. The later version was made for DG in the early 1970s with Eugen Jochum and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and has earned a high reputation over the years. This earlier version, made in January 1958, is no less remarkable and very different. Perhaps it was the temporary transatlantic influence of Reiner and his orchestra which persuaded Gilels to see the concerto as a vehicle for a display of brilliant virtuoso playing, with fast tempos and little relaxation except in the third movement. certainly the playing in the overture has the same characteristics. But when this approach was harnessed to Gilel's intellectual strength the result was a performance of great power." -- The Gramophone
