At first sight it seems odd to package Igor Levit’s glossy performances of the two Brahms piano concertos, with Christian Thielemann and the Vienna Philharmonic, with his exceptional disc of the four sets of late piano pieces. For while the concertos belong to separate phases of Brahms’s career – the D minor First was finished in 1858 and the Second, in B flat, 23 years later – the solo pieces belong to another musical world altogether. Dating from 1892 and 1893, those collections of intermezzi, capriccios and rhapsodies contain some of his most beautiful and introspective music. They are unlike anything else in the 19th-century piano repertoire.
Levit’s utterly compelling accounts of the late sets are the more impressive element in this collection. He does not put a foot wrong in any of them; each piece is perfectly shaped, its subtly varied emotional charge instantly identified. It’s hard to think of many better recordings of these 20 gems, and certainly not of all four opus numbers together.
Alongside them, though, the concertos are much less convincing. The performances of both works naturally contain striking moments; Levit is too intelligent a pianist and Thielemann too attentive and thoughtful a conductor not to bring some fresh ideas to these much-recorded works. But the tone of the D minor concerto is set in the opening tutti, where the playing of the Vienna Philharmonic seems limp and unresponsive. Things pick up a little when Levit enters, yet he can’t dispel the sense of routine that does not disappear until the finale, when Levit takes the lead with real muscularity.
There’s the same contrast between the soloist and the orchestra in the second concerto, too – Levit authoritative from the very start, Thielemann moulding the strings in a rather cloying, un-energised way, though both the opening horn solo and the cello in the slow movement are beautifully shaped. It’s disappointing; alongside the finest versions available – Nelson Freire with Riccardo Chailly on Decca, and Emil Gilels with Eugen Jochum on Deutsche Grammophon, to mention just a couple – these just aren’t competitive.
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