Brahms - The Piano Concertos

Johannes BRAHMS (1833-1897)

 Concertos for Piano Nos. 1 & 2, 

Fantasia Op. 116

 Emil Gilels (Piano)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Eugen Jochum 

These performances mount the only serious competition as a complete set to the Leon Fleisher/George Szell versions on Sony Classical. Emil Gilels was an extraordinary virtuoso who decided to place his technical wizardry in the service of the most disciplined and demanding classical masterpieces. No piano concertos live up to this description more than the two by Brahms. Himself a pianist, Brahms placed every purely musical stumbling block that he could in front of the soloist--only audiences never notice because there's no gratuitous display at all. A performer who has not mastered these pieces doesn't necessarily miss notes; he or she just bores everyone to tears. Well, Gilels is never dull, and neither is Eugen Jochum, whose spontaneous-sounding yet sensitive accompaniments support his soloist every step of the way. 

David Hurwitz

The Brahms Concertos seem to have brought out the very best in all the players and conductors to whom I have listened. All have strong virtues, and before attempting to say why the new version by Gilels and Jochum seems to me best of all, it would be as well to see where we stood before the new set appeared.

Serkin and Szell are ideal partners for their approach. With them the music is consistently big and serious. The velvet glove may occasionally be flourished, but we are never in the smallest doubt as to what is inside the glove. Most of their playing has a raw-boned dignity about it that was probably as close as their generation would approach to the heroic. Again and again a movement will begin in a way that seems almost literal – and then start to exert its strong grip. Serkin and Szell are at their best in the jabbing rhythms at the beginning of the No. 1 Rondo, or the bursting energy with which they commit themselves to the Scherzo of No. 2. It is a little difficult to reconcile this view of things with the brightening skies in the latter half of No. 2: besides making (for my taste) slightly heavy weather here, the Serkin/Szell partnership is not quite conducive to the unity of this score as a whole. Their No. 1, as regards unity, could hardly be bettered.

At the opposite extreme is Rubinstein. To describe his performances as full of Chopinesque lightness and grace would be to suggest a feminine atmosphere which they certainly do not have. But the fire and accelerando dash of these performances are sheer miracles – especially coming from an octogenarian player. And they are absolutely convincing – as distinct from authentic – accounts of the music in their own terms. The orchestras and conductors involved emerge less distinctly than in the other versions. If you treasure these records, you treasure them for the soloist alone – though he is a fine enough musician to see to it that his orchestras occupy reasonable musical positions. He fits into his orchestral pictures almost as readily as Serkin fits into Szell's, though in Rubinstein's case the partnerships are distinctly one of grace rather than of committed intellectual agreement.

Arrau and Haitink do not hit it off so effortlessly, I suspect because they are fundamentally different types of personality. Haitink has by nature a keen, sensitive sobriety. Arrau is a brilliant eccentric. In the performances it is generally Arrau who leads and Haitink who follows. This is because Arrau's playing is so full of surprising, idiosyncratic tricks of phrasing – which Haitink follows, but only at a distance. Left on his own, as at the beginning of the slow movement in No. 2, the conductor builds up an eloquent figure, shaped with a wonderful consistency of curve from start to finish – finish being the place where Arrau comes in. But these are not idiosyncratic or disagreeable performances. Conductor and soloist agree well enough in general to make of their divergences a gripping dialogue. And that is another approach to which the music lends itself wonderfully well.

What then can Gilels and Jochum bring to such a well populated community? The answer is a rapt songfulness that in no way detracts from Brahms's heroism, and so comes closer to that unique and complex combination of attitudes that for me is Brahms more than any other performances of these concertos I have ever heard, on records or otherwise. In this, Gilels and Jochum have undoubtedly been helped enormously by the DGG engineers. They have surrounded these performances with a sonorous, resonant amplitude. The piano really has an ideal concert-platform presence, while the stereo separation gives an exciting sense of the very large orchestra spread out all around the solo instrument. The orchestra's rich, slightly distant sound would have been wrong for the muscular immediacy of Serkin and Szell, equally wrong for the lithe agility of Rubinstein (whose shallow RCA recording would have been frankly ridiculous with any other approach). For what Gilels and Jochum aim at, the amplitude is perfect.

They have conspired together such an interpretation that I found myself forgetting to listen now for the piano part, now for the orchestra, but simply hearing the music for itself. There is everywhere a depth of agreement between soloist and conductor such as one hardly ever hears in concerto playing (indeed in that way this team are the very opposites of Arrau and Haitink). Gilels and Jochum seem at times almost improvisatory, though what they achieve could never have been found by chance. Rather, their manner seems to me to resemble the final exposition of some rare and closely guarded secret – understated, often underplayed, yet with an unfolding eloquence that steals gradually upon the ear and mind. Their changes of pace and pulse are correlated not to changes in scoring but rather to changes in melodic pattern – structural changes. So Gilels and Jochum have come very close to the absolute centre of the composer's unique expression: the ability to convince you not only that his whole exceeds the sum of its parts, but also that it comes in fact directly out of his use of those parts: in other words, that his synthesis is convincing. It is what every artist seeks, and what every great one achieves. But one rarely hears a perfect expression of it in concerto playing. Is that because of the concerto-situation, the dramatic pitting of ego against performing ego? Or because the performers are not usually the composers? Or for reasons deeper still? I don't know. But if you are not unalterably committed to one of the previous recordings, do hear the new set. I hope it may give you as much happiness as it has given me.

JNM (Jerrold Northrop Moore) Gramophone