A regular work in my Blog, in fact this is the seventh time it's graced my Blog, and the second time by Hough [24th October 2011], well one of the things that my Blog forces me to do, is look at works that i may well have listened to many dozens, or even hundreds of times, and find something new to say about them, in one way this gets harder and harder, in another way my 'expounding muscle' gets stronger and easier to use, this is one of the greatest Piano Concerto's in the repertoire, and must easily be in my personal top ten, i never tire of hearing it.
Stephen Hough is English, though he now has Australian citizenship too, he's now 50, and he recorded this disc in 1989, i remember i sold him a disc he bought from Amazon, he was living in a basement flat in London i believe, the front cover photograph [by Rory Carnegie] is really nice, using mainly dark browns, the right side of the shot is couched in darkness, which lends the left side to be highlighted by light, notice the red lettering goes with the red polka dot tie?!.
Again the movement of the moment is the second, cast in the unusual 4 movements, Brahms had a tendency to write his Concerto's very Symphonic anyhow, also this movement's in the key of D Minor, the same as his First Piano Concerto, and it's world seems to belong to that Concerto, maybe it was some cast off from there that didn't fit in, i just love this 9 minutes, dark yes, but there's also a shaft of optimism that goes with the rest of the Concerto, after an explosive opening, the music turns more inward [0:34-1:48], high solo strings, and piano ideas that are more wistful, but of course the opening keeps coming back, but only to keep dying down into this more reflectiveness phase,
Here's Daniel Barenboim playing the second movement on YouTube.
Here's Daniel Barenboim playing the second movement on YouTube.
Very glad to find your blog. Really is very interesting,Keep-up!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it, thank you very much!.
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