BRAHMS: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 15; Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Major, Op. 83 – Stephen Hough, piano/ Mozarteumorchester Salzburg/ Mark Wigglesworth – Hyperion CDA67961 (2 CDs) 49:05, 48:54 [Distr. by Harmonia mundi] (12/10/13) ****:
British piano virtuoso Stephen Hough (b. 1961) approaches the two Brahms piano concertos with the sense that they remain symphonic structures with keyboard obbligato. The 1858 D Minor Concerto from Hough may remind some auditors of a similar effort by Peter Katin some years ago. Mark Wigglesworth sets a broadly voluptuous, tragically athletic tone for the piano’s entry, fraught with dark, eddied arpeggios and trills. Hough’s contribution balances surging turmoil and lyric introspection, moving from sullen D Minor to B-flat Major to a relatively serene F Major that invokes some pastoral winds. The tumultuous working-out of the sonata-form takes place with plastic resonance from the French horn and Hough’s upward arpeggios, moving with a palpable sense of a fierce destiny – a la Beethoven – to the unusual recapitulation, which combines the low D in the tympani with the keyboard’s entry in E Major (and Hough’s spare pedal). The keyboard sonority of Hough’s Steinway has glorious, even blistering, representation sonically (rec. 11-15 January 2013), via Simon Eadon’s engineering efforts. Prior to the fitful coda, some truly affecting tympanic beats with the arpeggios of the keyboard extend the passion-play effected in this music.
The intimate Adagio, despite its epic scoring, remains a slow requiem for Robert Schumann and for this composer’s yearning for Schumann’s widow, Clara. The expanded ternary form gains a sudden momentum, only to collapse into sadness and a quiet cadenza of tender, mystical melancholy. William Mason once commented that the playing of this music demands “a composer, not a virtuoso.” Brahms may well have “borrowed” formulas from Beethoven’s dramatic C Minor Concerto in order to conclude the D Minor Concerto: the palindromic ABACABA structure proffers a gypsy Rondo in D Minor “whose bold spirit of a first theme” delighted Joseph Joachim. Hough has his expressive powers reaffirmed in the several cadenzas, moving inexorably to what Joachim characterized as “the solemn reawakening toward a majestic close.” Both latter movements enjoy an epically crisp sweep and palpable sense of romantic rapture from all principals, dramatic and lyrically expressive, at once.
Likely conceived during an 1878 sojourn to Italy, Brahms penned the Second Piano Concerto more fully three years later, in 1881, when he wrote Clara Schumann about his having completed “a tiny concerto with a tiny little wisp of a scherzo.” Both epic and lyric, the B-flat Concerto exudes a structural and technical confidence lacking in the more tempestuous Op. 15.
The opening motif in the (Alpine) French horn undergoes constant permutation, while the keyboard part assumes a variety of textures, alternately diaphanous and massive, a block-chord technique that virtuoso Claudio Arrau always claimed as unique to Brahms himself.
Once more, the essential warmth of the recording venue, the Salzburger Festspielhaus, illuminates the natural, effusive brilliance of the score. Conductor Wigglesworth elicits a fine, clear texture from his strings and horns, a soft penumbra that surrounds the often clarion, crystalline patina of Hough’s lofty, leisurely piano. The rustic Scherzo in D Minor adds a furious aspect to an otherwise relaxed sensibility, into which Hough and Wigglesworth inject a gypsy quality that suits the darkly thunderous material. Some may find Hough’s treatment of the slower figures precious, but he attacks each statement of the ritornello with defined aggression. Like the slow movement in the Violin Concerto, the Second Piano Concerto has an Andante that features a melodic second instrument, here the cello (Marcus Pouget) that develops the scene’s fragile beauty, interrupted by some passion that the clarinets will assuage. The keyboard part dominates late in the movement, spinning out garlands and chains of arpeggios that suggest an improvised moment of chamber music. The concluding Allegretto grazioso presents dashing Hungarian, gypsy figures from a light heart, the piano part – often played tempo rubato – often rousing and dazzling but well integrated into the forward motion.
Perhaps digitally slick and overly refined, the performance does command a hefty, generous presence, and we feel Hough harbors only vast affection for this grand music.
—Gary Lemco
