Brahms: Intermezzo cover

Brahms: Intermezzo

Composer
Released

Perahia and the Amadeus Quartet feast on Brahms’s First Piano Quartet like a pack of wolves that has finally felled a juicy elk. After a ravenous romp through its opening movement, and the snarling sinews of the second movement “Intermezzo,” one would expect a respite for digestion, but even the Andante third movement (more vigorous than most Brahms slow movements, but the slowest of the four) is imbued with carnivorous zeal. All of it is a prelude fourth movement “Rondo a la Zingaresca,” a rabid feeding frenzy in which the pecking order devolves into a tooth-and-nail melee for the last marrow on the bone. Amid the wreckage of broken bow hairs, rosin dust, and Perahia’s cuticles looms the specter of Arnold Schoenberg, whose red-blooded 1937 orchestration of the work undeniably influenced the bruising, orchestral proportions of this performance. (The four solo Perahia performances that round out the album are hardly table scraps. Even as a lone wolf, Perahia is a heckuva hunter.)

Zev Kane

Suggestions
Nordic Suites cover

Nordic Suites

Ensemble Esperanza
Johann Sebastian Bach cover

Johann Sebastian Bach

Víkingur Ólafsson
Mephistopheles & Other Bad Guys cover

Mephistopheles & Other Bad Guys

Kevin Short, Marseille Philharmonic Orchestra, Lawrence Foster, Orchestre Philharmonique De Marseille
Nightfall cover

Nightfall

Alice Sara Ott
Beethoven & Stravinsky: Violin Concertos cover

Beethoven & Stravinsky: Violin Concertos

Pekka Kuusisto, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Vilde Frang
Sibelius cover

Sibelius

Leif Ove Andsnes
Visages Baroques cover

Visages Baroques

Raphaël Feuillâtre