Brahms - Piano Concerto 2 [Zimerman/ Bernstein-Wiener Philharmoniker]This is a wonderful 3 disc box set, bringing together the 4 Concertos of Brahms, and quite rare too, i forget where i purchased this set, i think on Ebay, i've never seen another set since, and it's good to collect the Concertos of Brahms with such illustrious soloists as these.
Krystian Zimerman was born in Poland, now 54, he recorded this Concerto in 1984, it's a live recording, as Bernstein has a great tendency to record live, the photographs on the front cover are by different photographers, the one of Zimerman is by Susesch Bayat, a nice concept i suppose, the green background and the lettering are really nice.
Wow what a tremendous musical high i had listening to this, every movement was a wonderful revelation, of course this is a live recording, as is the way with Bernstein, and therefore the acoustics might not be ideal, the orchestral sound can be a bit thin, especially the strings, a lack of warmth and bloom, the stereo separation can be somewhat squashed, almost a slightly mono-ish tendency, but the piano sound is really good, seemingly larger than life against the orchestral perspective, Zimerman also has a tendency to be a bit slow, especially in the more reflective passages, if i had to plump for a favourite movement on this listen it would be the third, as in the slow movement of his Violin Concerto, where the oboe steals the melody, so in this Piano Concerto the cello [Wolfgang Herzer] right from the start takes up the melody, and not for some short stint, but two long and languorous moments [0:00-1:02 & 1:38-2:50], gives us a glimpse of what a Cello Concerto could have sounded like under Brahms, Zimerman spins the long and languid lines of his cadenza-like solo with a certain reverence [3:15-4:35], and he makes his piano nicely chime, in a wistful coda [7:53-9:50], with just soft half light strings in the background, and of course the cello gets a reprise at the end [9:51+], and the piano comes in to join in a duet [10:34+], it's a lovely moment as each interweaves around each other, and they take this to the end, it's almost a Double Concerto!, i'm thankful that Brahms kept his four movement plan, it works wonders.
Here's Daniel Barenboim playing the third movement on YouTube.
