Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 & Three Intermezzi Op. 117 (Live)

From the genuinely soft playing of the opening horn solo, and the flowing and confident playing from both orchestra and soloist, you’ll realize you are in for a quite special performance. Pianist Francesco Piemontesi, unlike so many others performing Brahms, never hammers his instrument, even when there’s the temptation to make an obvious “tempestuous” effect. Yet don’t be deceived—this is not a low-key performance. In the equally important orchestral part, you can hear the Gewandhaus strings effectively convey Brahms’ veiled passion in the theme that follows the piano’s first entry. Between pianist and the conductor, Manfred Honeck, the drama unfolds smoothly, rising to a steady boil and a climax which readily recalls the burning fury of Brahms’ First Concerto. After this, the horn call’s return appears all the more striking, elegiac after so much storm and fury. Everything is “in character” without any heavy-handedness, making a single, coherent narrative of a movement which so often appears discursive in other hands. And so it goes through the next two movements, the serenity and even a sense of hopeful anticipation at the end of the third movement genuinely moving. Even the relatively straightforward finale is freshly reconceived, its dance rhythms more sharply defined than usual. The Op. 117 solo pieces, once described by Brahms as “lullabies of my grief,” are played beautifully—listen in the first piece to how song-like Piemontesi makes the countermelody to the return of the opening theme.