Johannes Brahms Cello Sonatas (Rostropovich,Serkin)[P]1990(Pugz

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CD :
Sonata for Cello and Piano no 1 in E minor, Op. 38 by Johannes Brahms
Performer: Mstislav Rostropovich (Cello), Rudolf Serkin (Piano)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1862-1865; Austria
Sonata for Cello and Piano no 2 in F major, Op. 99 by Johannes Brahms
Performer: Rudolf Serkin (Piano), Mstislav Rostropovich (Cello)
Period: Romantic
Written: 1886; Austria
Release Date: 10/25/1990
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Catalog #: 410510
Spars Code: DDD
Composer: Johannes Brahms
Performer: Mstislav Rostropovich, Rudolf Serkin
Number of Discs: 1
Recorded in: Stereo
The balance is not quite right, with the cello too prominent, but once I got used to that the performances started to take me over.
Here we have two of the greatest classical interpreters of their time taking us into the special world of Brahms, and they had me
thinking about the composer in a way I have not done in years. Most books and articles I have read about him have a lot to say about
Beethoven, but I really doubt whether Brahms's music would have been much different if Beethoven had never lived. Both consciously
and by instinct, Brahms was the guardian of the great German musical tradition embodied above all in Bach -- a tradition where pure
'absolute' music expressed itself through an intellectual apparatus of polyphonic and structural devices. Since Bach's time Haydn
and Mozart had perfected for instrumental music a compositional system usually called the 'sonata' style. Beethoven had naturally
picked this up, but what he forced on to it was a special dimension of highly personalised expression, and it is precisely this way
of treating it that Brahms turned his back on. With him we are back, in his own deeply original way, to music using the composer to
express ITself.
I seem to find that Brahms gets more instinctive understanding from performers than Beethoven does, and I believe quite simply that
that is because he understands himself better than Beethoven does himself. Teetering on the verge of incoherence at times was all
part of Beethoven's unique greatness, and it is not disrespectful -- quite the reverse -- to say so. I have heard far more good
performances than bad ones of these two wonderful sonatas, and the special meaning these particular accounts have for me is not
something that I felt at first hearing. When a pianist of very special and unusual gifts is aged 80 or so and has retained his
technique and evenness of touch, when he has spent a lifetime developing an austere and uncompromising vision of the instrumental
music that we normally think of as being the 'greatest', when he studies completely afresh the works he is to perform with the
greatest cellist of the next generation, there is a good chance we are going to get something very special, and I do not believe
I am imagining it. This is a totally unique artistic combination offering a very special -- not eccentric in any way but still very
special -- insight into a composer that many of us know by heart without really getting our minds round the phenomenon he represents.
This record is a milestone in my musical pilgrimage and maybe it will be in yours.