Johannes Brahms: Piano works (ECM)
****
Nobody does it like Brahms, and the later the better. Once he gets past opus 110, the great man goes beyond the need to please or explain. The music flows with an unarguable authority, a gravity that has the force of nature, bringing a consolation from the very depths of the earth.
Four of Brahms last seven works were for solo piano. Each set is divided in short pieces, for use in times of stress and sorrow. I keep them by the medicine cabinet. They are also useful for when the kids have just left the house.
On this new release, recorded in the Beethovenhaus Bonn in March 2021, Andras Schiff brings a welcome ease and assurance to the music in what must have been the thirteenth month of Covid, as anxious a time as any of us can recall. Schiff plays the last four sets, opp, 116, 117, 118 and 119, with the prior opus 76, two decades older. For sheer, instant pleasure, this music is hard to beat.
My one reservation is the piano used in this recording. Schiff has chosen a Blüthner of 1859, which would have been three decades old and considered old-technology by the time most of these pieces were composed. The instrument yields a slightly woody timbre, like a cigar left too long in the box, as well as a clipped effect to some of the phrase endings. The ear soon adjusts to the peculiar sound but every now and then it pricks up at the plinkity of it. On the other hand, I keep relistening to see if I’m hearing right. Remember watching snooker on a black-and-white television set? A bit like that.
NL