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Brahms 1st piano concerto - greatest post Beethoven 19th cent piano concerto?

13K views 48 replies 30 participants last post by  hansenkd 
#1 · (Edited)
Just listening to CD review and Brahms 1st Piano Concerto. This is my favourite post Beethoven 19th century piano concerto (Brahms 2cnd is too middle aged). I've heard that even Britten (a notorious dis-liker of Brahms) liked it.

Any way in my book there's no competition!!!!
 
#5 · (Edited)
I was listening to a comparative review of several recording - I myself have the Clifford Curzon with the LSO under George Szell.

What do I mean by too middle aged? Brahms orchestration can sometimes be rather full (overweight?) and this is more the case in the second. The first is much leaner. Plus the second seems to have mellowed out (well certainly in the slow movement) - is mellowing out part of the aging process?

All I know is the first is young man's music and it grabs me by the throat in a way the second just doesn't - much as I like it too.
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#4 · (Edited)
The 1st PC has been a steady favourite among Brahms` works for me too.

Horowitz/Walter, Manz/Mandeal and Woodward/Masur are some of my most treasured recordings. The first one mentioned has swifter tempi than usual, which I suspect were more customary in Brahms own time than now, and the last two are overall more conventional recordings.
 
#6 ·
Brahms' 1st has always been my favorite piano concerto as well. It is a young man's work emotionally, but not technically. There is more of a mellow nature to the 2nd, but it also has its impassioned moments, and as a composition it is marvelous in the way it builds itself on fragments.

By the way, I have listened to many versions of the 1st over the years, but for my money, Curzon/Szell has always been the best in spite of the heavy breathing in the second movement.
 
#8 ·
Brahms' 1st has always been my favorite piano concerto as well. It is a young man's work emotionally, but not technically. There is more of a mellow nature to the 2nd, but it also has its impassioned moments, and as a composition it is marvelous in the way it builds itself on fragments.

By the way, I have listened to many versions of the 1st over the years, but for my money, Curzon/Szell has always been the best in spite of the heavy breathing in the second movement.
The heavy breathing is Szell
 
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#9 ·
The Brahms first piano Concerto is certainly a titanic piece. But it needs a titanic performance to bring it off. Like Serkin with Szell or Curzon also with Szell. The second is not middle aged unless made to sound that way. Try Richter and Leinsdorf for how it should sound or Serkin's early recording with Ormandy - full of fire! Interesting that although the Gilels / Jochum is highly rated his earlier version with Reiner is far more up tempo and therefore better.
 
#15 ·
You want a young man's approach to both concertos, then try Leon Fleischer with George Szell.
A very great Brahms pianist who died much too young was Julius Katchen, his recordings of all the piano music still set the standard, his recordings of the concerti are terrific.
 
#16 · (Edited)
I've not heard Fleisher's recordings, something of a serious omission which I must take steps to rectify. I still think, of the ones I have heard, that Rubinstein's recording of the 1st with Reiner and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is an outstanding performance (which I have gone on about at length somewhere else!) Solomon's recording of the 2nd with Dobrowen and the Philharmonia is a good strong performance, I also like Backhaus's late recording with Bohm and the Vienna Philharmonic, it has a warm feel to it which I, personally find very enticing, and Brahms' orchestration certainly doesn't sound overweight to my ears at any rate.
 
#18 ·
I like Fleisher/Szell and Gilels/Jochum.
 
#24 ·
One of the finest accounts I heard was from the Leeds Piano Competition when a young American, Lydia Artimaw, gave a blustering performance. She should have won on the basis of that but the judges, with usual conservatism, gave it to Michel Dalberto. But the young tigress playing Brahms lives in the memory.
 
#27 ·
It is great music. Is it better than the PCs of Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninov, Bartok, or Prokofiev, or Tchaikovsky? In the wrong hands, Brahms 1 can sound pretty turgid, and the tendency over the past 20 years or so is to slow it down, which I don't like.
The recordings of Leon Fleisher and Rudolf Serkin nailed it, about 50 years ago. Stick with those.
 
#29 · (Edited)
It is great music. Is it better than the PCs of Schumann, Grieg, Rachmaninov, Bartok, or Prokofiev, or Tchaikovsky? In the wrong hands, Brahms 1 can sound pretty turgid, and the tendency over the past 20 years or so is to slow it down, which I don't like.
This is about the 2nd Brahms concerto but somehow I thought people here might be amused

article (with much more funny stuff): Whose Brahms? by Jeremy Denk
 
#28 · (Edited)
Just listening to CD review and Brahms 1st Piano Concerto. This is my favourite post Beethoven 19th century piano concerto (Brahms 2nd is too middle aged). I've heard that even Britten (a notorious dis-liker of Brahms) liked it.
Greatest since Beethoven? Impossible to say...

Not sure I follow this 'young man's music' thing. Brahms' 2nd concerto is more refined, with an obviously symphonic structural foundation and is probably more Romantic leaning than classical. That scherzo has a lot of the same 'bite' as there may be found in the first.

It''s like comparing Rachmaninov's third with his second -- both truly great, but the third is more ambitious, more expertly crafted.
 
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