Brahms (and Schubert) is the hardest composer to understand. Like so much standard repertoire, playing him well is almost a completely lost art. Overdramatize Barhms and he just sounds hectoring, overprofound Brahms and he just sounds pretentious. To find both the profundity in Brahms, you often have to play him like light music. Brahms is both the flow of life and the glow of the next world. He's the world of complex emotions that are constantly evolving through time and flitting with the omnipresent shock of new circumstances. He's the divided self between private thought and public appearance. He's my first musical love, I've listened to more Brahms than just about any other composer. I'm more convinced than ever that understanding of Brahms is (or at least it was...) the largest fundamental sign of a truly cosmic musician. Here's a very small list of the performers who have convinced me that they fundamentally 'get it.' I'm not gonna spend time finding chamber music, singer and choral links...:
Sunday, August 28, 2022
A Quick Brahms Playlist
A list of performers who 'get it.'
Conductors (surprisingly and sadly they do the best):
Walter
Ansermet
Munch (really)
Busch
Steinberg
Wand
Masur
HM for kinda getting it...: Weingartner, Klemperer, Abravanel, Mravinsky, Kubelik, Sawallisch, Dohnanyi, Jansons, Bychkov
Violinists
Huberman
Szigeti
Busch
Milstein
HM: Kreisler, Oistrakh, Stern, Gitlis, Suk
Pianists:
Backhaus
Rubinstein
Firkusny
Lupu
Ohlsson (really)
HM: Schnabel, E. Fischer, L. Kraus, Kovacevich, Volodos,
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