Rudolf Buchbinder - Brahms: Piano Concertos (2016)

By 1858, Brahms had his First Piano Concerto ready for performance. He was then only 25. Beethoven had died three decades earlier. Try imagining a 25-year old composer today. Stravinsky–a figure of our time comparable to Beethoven in terms of novelty and influence on subsequent composers–died only 30 years ago. His personality still weighs on today’s new music, and you can still hear echoes of his typical rhythmic signatures in plenty of recent works written by young composers. As mature and striking as it may be, Brahms’ First piano concerto is nonetheless a youthful work, and it conveys his insecurities at the time of its composition, along with his deep devotion to composers of the past. A certain flair for rhetoric inherited from Baroque music and an underlying drama similar to what Mozart expresses in his feverish D minor concerto or Beethoven in his own C minor are just a few of the possible sources of inspiration that hang over Brahms’ Op. 15. It conveys all at once the urgency, exaltation, anguish, and utopian aspirations of youth, combined with a power of invention and “bigger-than-life” dramatic stamina that only a young genius such as Brahms could imagine.

TRACKLIST

01 - Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor, Op.15, I. Maestroso
2 - Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor, Op.15, II. Adagio
03 - Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor, Op.15, III. Allegro non troppo
04 - Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 83, I. Allegro non troppo
05 - Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 83, II. Allegro appassionato
06 - Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 83, III. Andante
07 - Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-Flat Major, Op. 83, IV. Allegretto grazioso