Rudolf Buchbinder BEETHOVEN Piano Concertos

 

PIANO CONCERTOS

 

Anne-Sophie Mutter JOHN WILLIAMS Violin concerto No. 2 (Video)

VIOLIN CONCERTO No. 2

 

Jessie Montgomery: Starburst

John Williams: Violin concerto No. 2 (World Premiere)

John Williams: New arrangements of film themes “Across the Stars“

Aaron Copland: Quiet City

Igor Stravinsky: Suite from “The Firebird“ (1919 Edition)

Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphonies Nos. 1, 14 & 15 - Chamber Symphony in C Minor

 

SYMPHONIES NOS. 1, 14 & 15

 

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphonies Nos. 2 & 8

 

SYMPHONIES NOS. 2 & 8

Vienna Philharmonic / Andris Nelsons NEW YEAR'S CONCERT 2020

                                                             Neujahrskonzert 2020

Andris Nelsons / Wiener Philharmoniker BEETHOVEN Complete Symphonies

Andris Nelsons, the leading conductor of his generation, has recorded all nine Beethoven symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic. Their cycle promises to reveal the compelling partnership between the conductor and the most renowned Beethoven orchestra in the world. Beethoven: Complete Symphonies, released 4 October 2019, is presented in a deluxe box set featuring five CDs and a single Blu-ray Audio disc in TrueHD sound quality. The release marks the start of Deutsche Grammophon’s celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth next year.

Beethoven has been central to Andris Nelsons’ work since he began his career in the early 2000s. The Latvian conductor received outstanding reviews for his 2013-14 Beethoven cycle with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and was critically acclaimed for more recent Beethoven performances as Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Leipzig Gewandhausorchester. In March and April this year he joined the Vienna Philharmonic, the world’s supreme Beethoven orchestra, for a series of concerts including works by the composer in Vienna, Hamburg and Hanover, and for the final recording sessions of their complete symphony cycle at the Vienna Musikverein. Nelsons said it was an honour and a privilege to be invited to perform and record the symphonies with the Vienna Philharmonic.

“The journey of interpreting Beethoven’s symphonies signifies a great opportunity, responsibility and challenge, but in the end, it’s not about me, it’s purely about the genius and universal quality of Beethoven’s music, which speaks to each and every individual,” explained Andris Nelsons. “Of course, I need to have a vision, and our task as musicians is to find a fulfilling way of presenting Beethoven’s ideas to listeners, but this will always be very subjective and deeply personal.”

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphonies Nos. 6 & 9

Andris Nelsons’ revelatory readings of Bruckner’s symphonies are permeated by his understanding of the many contradictions within the composer’s character – not least the opposition between an essential awareness of his own talent and the insecurity that compelled him to rework his scores again and again. Set for release on 3 May 2019, the latest title in the Latvian conductor’s ongoing cycle for Deutsche Grammophon, performed with his Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, prefaces Bruckner’s Sixth and Ninth Symphonies with Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll and Prelude to Parsifal respectively. Light and dark, triumph and tragedy, life and death coexist here in a state of uneasy tension, resolved but never reconciled.

Bruckner’s symphonies are a minefield of multiple versions, confusing revisions and clashes between manuscript and published sources. Nelsons has opted to follow Leopold Nowak’s critical edition for these performances. The Sixth Symphony (1879-81), notable for its structural economy and clarity, was one of Bruckner’s favourites among his own works. Much of the work is striking for its dynamism, but at its emotional centre is the dark and troubled Adagio, whose music, as Nelsons observes, anticipates the soundworld of Mahler. While the Sixth was written within two years and spared from later revision by the composer, Bruckner laboured on his ninth and final symphony for much of the final decade of his life. Nelsons has followed convention to perform the Ninth in its three-movement form. The closing Adagio echoes the rising melody of the so-called “Dresden Amen” in homage to Wagner, who made prominent use of the theme in Parsifal.

As he told Gramophone in April 2018, Nelsons is determined, above all, “to show Bruckner the human being, with all his doubts, obsessions, as well as Bruckner the man who is very religious and lives according to certain strong rules, and how that sometimes conflicts with and sometimes fulfils his approach in his music.”

The Gewandhausorchester players bring the ambiguities inherent in Bruckner’s scores vibrantly to life. The composer is in the orchestra’s collective DNA. It embraced him when it gave the world premiere of his Seventh Symphony in 1884 and made history again soon after the First World War by performing the first complete cycle of his nine symphonies. “The Gewandhausorchester’s ability to play this music is very special”, says Nelsons, “there’s a sensitivity and intimacy that I like very much.”

Andris Nelsons / Boston Symphony Orchestra DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7 - Incidental Music to "King Lear"

After the scandalously successful (Sunday Times) Symphony No. 10 in 2015, the sheer expressive beauty (Gramophone Magazine) of Symphonies Nos. 5, 8, 9 from 2016, and the overbearing vividness (The Guardian) of the most recent Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11, Nelsons and the BSO continue the Grammy-winning cycle with Symphonies Nos. 6 & 7. The symphonies are complemented by two other works by Shostakovich, the Suite from the Incidental Music to King Lear, Op. 58a and the Festive Overture, Op. 96.

Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphonies Nos. 4 & 11 "The year 1905"

Deutsche Grammophon proudly continues the widely acclaimed, Grammy winning Shostakovich Symphony cycle with Music Director Andris Nelsons and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Andris Nelsons is the Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and new Gewandhauskapellmeister of the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. With both appointments, and in leading a pioneering alliance between these two esteemed institutions, he is firmly underlined as one of the most renowned, exciting and innovative conductors on the international scene today. After the “scandalously successful” (Sunday Times) Symphony No. 10 in 2015 and “the sheer expressive beauty” Gramophone Magazine) of Symphonies Nos. 5, 8, 9 from 2016 Andris Nelsons and his Bostonians turn their attention to the extrovert Fourth and dramatic Eleventh - both recorded live for the third instalment of this long-term collaboration of the Boston Symphony Orchestra – “America's most cultured orchestra” (BBC Music Magazine).

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphony No. 7

...“Wagner’s music, like Bruckner’s goes way beyond the intellectual,” observes Nelsons. “Both composers use their work to address existential questions and open up new spiritual dimensions.” This is music of concentrated, raw emotion, music that goes straight to the heart, and it is hard to think of any orchestra capable of interpreting it with greater intensity than the Gewandhausorchester. As Nelsons adds, “The orchestra’s incredible variety of sounds is particularly vividly displayed in Bruckner’s compositions. I hope through our recordings to further cultivate and disseminate this immense spectrum of colours and the orchestra’s special authority in the Romantic repertoire.”

Andris Nelsons himself is one of the most dynamic and innovative conductors of our time. As Music Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra he has already broken new musical ground, and his inauguration as Gewandhauskapellmeister represents another major milestone in his career. “It is an extraordinary honour to be part of this tradition,” he says, adding that the orchestra should aim to keep evolving. Their mission together, as he sees it, is to look to the future by commissioning new works as well as respecting the past and keeping the music of the great masters alive.

That aim is reflected in Leipzig’s upcoming four-week festival, whose programmes embrace past and present, with music by composers ranging from Bach to Tchaikovsky, to Jörg Widmann. Shortly after these celebrations, Nelsons will embark on his first European tour with the Gewandhausorchester, performing at such prestigious venues as Hamburg’s Elbphilharmonie, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and the Vienna Musikverein.

All in all, it promises to be a rousing start to a new era in Leipzig’s musical history. (Deutsche Grammophon)

Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons BRAHMS The Symphonies

In a personal booklet note for this set Andris Nelsons celebrates the recorded legacy of Brahms in Boston, referencing complete cycles from Leinsdorf and Haitink and recordings of individual symphonies under Koussevitzky, Munch and Ozawa. Only a conductor supremely confident in his own identity would venture to do so, of course, and Nelsons is nothing if not his own man in this repertoire, confounding expectations in some respects while confirming them in others. His Brahms is as vital, impulsive and rhythmic as all his work strives to be – though not as sheerly dynamic as one might have imagined – but there is blend and bloom, too, with Symphony Hall, Boston, seeming to accommodate this music from the bass lines upwards; a deep and sonorous sound.

Nelsons talks of finding precisely the right character for each movement and in that he truly listens to the music, feeling its pulse and allowing the phrasing to evolve with as little intervention or ‘shaping’ as possible. He is generous without indulgence, muscular without vulgarity. Just occasionally one senses him harnessing his natural dynamism in deference to the music’s noble pedigree. Perhaps I was expecting a higher degree of tension and excitement from the opening movement of the First Symphony. The promise is there in the tragically underpinned sostenuto of the opening – giving way as it does to the enticing woodwinds of the second lyric idea – but maybe the main Allegro could be a shade more imperative.

That’s the thing about this music: you don’t want to unduly drive it but nor do you want to simply luxuriate in it. The second movement of the First brings to the fore the distinguished Boston woodwinds and a sense of the music evolving in the playing of it. And then there is the finale, with storm clouds famously clearing with the BSO’s refulgent solo horn and a chorale of trombones to die for. Now the main Allegro here is liberating for sure, and perhaps Nelsons had been intentionally holding something in reserve because the climax leading to the return of the ubiquitous horn theme is rollicking indeed.

Anyone who thinks that Brahms was the conservative and Wagner the radical needs to think again. The evolution of the Second demonstrates how mindful Nelsons is of that. The myriad twists and turns and underlying threat of the autumnal first movement (where the deviation from and contortion of form is so pronounced) is boldly chronicled, and the second movement – with wonderful string-playing – is likewise gripping in the way Nelsons appreciates how daringly the material is developed. But the sun comes out again in the bracing finale and Nelsons is definitely off the leash. The return of the second subject is the warmest of hugs and the coda is exuberantly rip-roaring, descending trombones cutting through the texture like noisy bell chimes.

The Third Symphony is gorgeous. The first movement has what the Viennese might call Schwung (Nelsons includes the exposition repeat) and the development really earns its climax. In the slow movement the aforementioned naturalness and fluidity of Nelsons’s phrasing (what musicality this man has) is possessed of a spontaneity that repays his belief in the music. The Bostonians really sing. And the celebrated Poco allegretto of the third movement has the appropriate ache of nostalgia. Note, too, the magical evaporation of the finale’s coda: Nelsons’s Wagner tellingly referenced.

And so to the great Fourth. Again, don’t expect Toscanini. Nelsons builds the first movement’s head of steam by stealth, measuring its expansive lyricism – and grandeur – with a growing resolve. The measured processional of the second movement evolves into something quite ravishing, with the return of that second theme in the chest register of the Boston strings especially memorable. A similar voluptuousness arrives with the first variant of the chaconne finale and you can almost feel Nelsons channelling Brahms in the way he moves from one inspired improvisation to the next.

So, much to enjoy from an orchestra who seem to have found the perfect soulmate for this stage in their ongoing journey. The mutual respect and like-mindedness is palpable in each of these performances and, whatever you may feel about this choice or that, there’s always a very real sense of music-making happening ‘in the moment’ and for that one time only. (Edward Seckerson / Gramophone)

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphony No. 4

Spring 2018 sees the release of two new albums by the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester and Andris Nelsons on the Deutsche Grammophon label, coinciding with the orchestra’s 275^th anniversary and the conductor’s inauguration as the new Gewandhauskapellmeister. These live recordings, each coupled with pieces from Wagner operas, form part of a complete Bruckner cycle on the yellow label. Bruckner’s Symphony No.4 will be released on 16 February, Symphony No.7 on 6 April 2018.

In Leipzig, past and present have always gone hand in hand, a successful fusion that will soon be encapsulated in a very special four-week-long music festival. Taking place in the city between 18 February and 24 March, the festival will mark both the 275^th anniversary of the Leipzig Gewandhausorchester, and the official inauguration as the 21^st Gewandhauskapellmeister of the exceptional Latvian conductor Andris Nelsons, one of the most exciting musicians on the world stage today. Deutsche Grammophon is joining in the celebrations by releasing two new albums that not only showcase Nelsons and his new orchestra, but also continue the long-established links between Leipzig and Bruckner.

The first of these albums, scheduled for release on 16 February 2018, features Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony alongside the Prelude to Wagner’s Lohengrin. The pairing reveals the remarkable affinities between the two composers’ idioms. Rich in contrast and musical imagery, both works have the power to captivate their listeners, a quality enhanced by Nelsons’ highly focused and sensitive interpretations.

The second Bruckner/Wagner album to appear this spring will feature the Austrian composer’s Seventh Symphony, a work more closely connected with Leipzig and the Gewandhausorchester than virtually any other ever written. Under the baton of the then Gewandhauskapellmeister Arthur Nikisch, the orchestra gave the symphony’s world premiere in the city’s municipal theatre in 1884, and the Seventh has been performed in Leipzig countless times since. It was therefore an obvious choice to include this legendary work in the orchestra’s 275^th anniversary gala concert which Andris Nelsons will conduct on 11 March 2018. Captured live, this unique performance will be released on 6 April in Germany and 20 April worldwide, in a pairing with Siegfried’s Funeral Music from Wagner’s Götterdämmerung.

Both albums are part of Deutsche Grammophon’s upcoming complete Bruckner cycle with Nelsons and the Gewandhausorchester. In each case, the Bruckner symphony in question will be complemented by an excerpt from one of Wagner’s operas, an innovative programming decision which, along with the high-calibre performers involved, gives the new cycle a distinctive edge. Coupling the symphonies with music by Wagner enables listeners to discover two composers of contrasting character whose works nevertheless display some fascinating similarities of conception. (Deutsche Grammophon)

Gewandhausorchester / Andris Nelsons BRUCKNER Symphony No. 3

With a strong sense of emotional involvement Nelsons breathes life into this wonderful score directing a performance of elevated quality. With ideal weight the cultured playing of the Gewandhausorchester has a steadfast unity of a grade rarely achieved but it never comes at the cost of expression. Impressive too is how Nelsons shapes the phrases with such authority. Glorious too is the quality of the intonation and vibrant tone colour achieved by the orchestra, conspicuously the brass section with its gleaming golden hue . . . In the opening movement Nelsons conveys a strong feeling of grandeur, bold and positive in mood providing a convincing forward momentum. The treasurable second movement Adagio is exquisitely performed by the Leipzig players with Nelsons setting an ideal pace . . . Nelsons' uplifting Scherzo in the dramatic passages is punchy in its urgency and contrasts with the delightful, feathery Austrian "Ländler". It's easy to savour the sense of Alpine majesty that Nelsons creates in the remarkable final movement, sustaining an especially splendid flow which feels persuasive. The section with the joyous Polka over the solemn Chorale sounds especially impressive and after the conclusion of the symphony I can't resist repeating this section again . . . [Wagner]: In a gripping performance Nelsons conducts the "Tannhäuser Overture" with surefire conviction. The Gewandhausorchester respond to his lead with all the expressive zeal and breath-taking virtuosity which one has come to expect. Exceptional is the velvety legato and tonal beauty of the prominent horns. Nelsons interpretation is first class . . . (Michael Cookson /MusicWeb International)

Barbara Hannigan HANS ABRAHAMSEN / PAUL GRIFFITHS Let Me Tell You

“As this filtration process is itself worked through Abrahamsen’s half-hour score, however, the idea has undergone another transformation. The spare yet pregnant lines of text meet Abrahamsen’s finely spun textures and each word feels felt and weighed in music. Possibly you don’t even need to know that Barbara Hannigan is singing Ophelia’s words any more, yet her vehemence and passion suggest she thinks justice is finally being done to a woman who never did get much chance to tell her side of the story.
Hannigan premiered the piece in 2013 (then it was performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under Andris Nelsons; now the Latvian has recorded it with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra) and had reportedly coached the composer on the intricacies of vocal music for what was his first sung work. One imagines these sessions produced the use of stile concitato emphases on repeated syllables, a flick of Monteverdi added to a more usual Hannigan repertoire of jarring leaps and plunges across her formidable range.
The Bard’s Ophelia drowned in the brook; this one wanders into the snow, her tread hypnotically evoked by paper softly rubbed around the skin of a bass drum. It’s a tiny, tragic Winterreise, but its final sung echoes are defiant: ‘I will go on’. The rest is silence.” (Gramophone, February 2016)

Hélène Grimaud PERSPECTIVES

She could be called a Renaissance woman for our times. Hélène Grimaud is not just a deeply passionate and committed musical artist whose pianistic accomplishments play a central role in her life. She is a woman with multiple talents that extend far beyond the instrument she plays with such poetic expression and peerless technical control. The French artist has established herself as a committed wildlife conservationist, a compassionate human rights activist and as a writer.

The word ‘perspective’ has a Latin root that means ‘to look through’. It is a word that readily applies to Hélène Grimaud’s way of making music and conceiving programs. She never plays a piece simply for the sake of playing it. She ‘looks through’ a composition, scrutinizing its components, its implications, its ambiguities, its position within that particular composer’s output, its commonalities with other like-minded works, and its tactile, spiritual and emotional resonances. For Grimaud, this collection is a retrospective offering new perspectives through a very personal choice of repertoire which creates enlightening new echoes between works. From Bach to Rachmaninov, Mozart to Chopin, Grimaud’s own selection of highlights from her albums reflects her artistic journey through the piano’s most famous solo and concerto repertoire in a series of interpretations that never fail to offer new perspectives on even the most familiar music – to be released in April!

Andris Nelsons / Boston Symphony Orchestra DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH Symphonies Nos. 5, 8 & 9 - Suite from "Hamlet"

. . . played with insight and panache . . . [the performance Andris Nelsons] coaxes from his musicians is at the highest level and the deep soundstage of the recording makes it an excellent album for headphones . . . [Shostakovich 5]: Nelsons conducts with a storyteller's eye for detail. A passage near the end of the first movement . . . is dramatically poignant. In Nelsons' transparency, the soft pluck of a harp and the ping of a glockenspiel come into focus. Even menacing moments are judged for clarity . . . [Shostakovich 8]: Nelsons has a way with the BSO woodwinds as well . . . piccolos glare, double reeds converse in intimate asides and English horn player Robert Sheena gets plenty of space to breathe in his plaintive first movement solo . . . [Shostakovich 9]: [Nelsons lets] the BSO strings dance and sing while the brass wink and snarl . . . (Tom Huizenga / 19. May 2016)

 

[Shostakovich 9]: A stern-sounding fanfare -- the BSO horns have played brilliantly of late under the direction of the former trumpeter Nelsons -- makes the fourth movement, Largo, sound dramatic, but not tragic. The finale is a piece of concluding genius, played with professional exuberance . . . [Shostakovich 5]: The music is gripping, innately classical in concept, and full of originality. From the opening . . . listeners are engaged. (Keith Powers / 26. May 2016)

Stephen Hough / Andris Nelsons / City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra DVORÁK - SCHUMANN Piano Concertos

Andris Nelsons and the CBSO clearly relish the symphonic nature of the piece and their playing is one of the great pleasures here. The concerto’s opening theme could be by no one else, though the mood soon darkens with a cautionary figure sounded first by violas and cellos. Nelsons imbues this with an affecting resignation, Kleiber sounding more openly disturbed. Hough enters the conversation with great subtlety and he’s certainly unafraid to point out the score’s lyrical beauties, allowing the music to unfold with suppleness without underplaying its drama or, where required, heft.

The glorious slow movement, which is launched by a New World-like horn solo, needs careful pacing: get it wrong and the question-and-answer writing can sound forced and overly sectionalised. Richter and Kleiber dare to take a slightly more drawn-out approach than this new recording, but both versions are compelling, and the CBSO players relish Dvořák’s unfettered wind-writing. Another black spot is the Risoluto (tr 2, 3'31" on the new CD); in the wrong hands its accented motif—first in the major, then the minor—can sound trite but Hough gives it a playful quality, to which the orchestra gleefully respond. Another highlight is the very end of the slow movement, where the piano-writing ascends, drawing the orchestra up with it.

I slightly prefer Richter’s way with the foot-stomping theme that opens the finale, which is superbly complemented by the earthiness of Kleiber’s orchestra. Hough sounds just a tad deliberate by comparison (compared to Piemontesi too, who is fearless here). This is a hideously ungrateful movement for the pianist and Hough is remarkable in not having a note out of place. And he certainly brings the house down at the end, setting the seal on a performance that is full of panache.

From a work at the margins of the repertoire to one that is absolutely centre stage. The Schumann Concerto is, in Hough’s hands, both boldly symphonic and utterly flexible, the pianist hardly making life easy for the conductor—though Nelsons is completely unfazed. The opening is strong and bold, adjectives that apply equally to the first movement’s cadenza, which has grandeur as well as excitement. Sample tr 4 from 4'50" and this will give you a taster: Hough, first solo and then as chamber musician, is ravishing but also dangerously becalmed. But for me a bigger stumbling block is the way he turns Schumann’s Intermezzo into something altogether more languorous (the stretched-out cello theme at 1'21" will give you an idea); just compare Shelley in this movement—to my mind pretty much unsurpassed among modern-day recordings. Symphonic breadth triumphs over Mozartian lightness in the finale, yet that weight is offset by some superbly delicate figuration from Hough.

So a slightly mixed bag; but this version of the Dvořák should put it on the map for a new generation. Personal and heartfelt notes from Steven Isserlis and a superbly natural recording complete the package. (Gramophone)

Andris Nelsons / Boston Symphony Orchestra SHOSTAKOVICH Symphony No. 10

For the first instalment of a Shostakovich series titled  Under Stalin’s Shadow, Andris Nelsons has chosen the composer’s monumental Tenth Symphony, prefaced with the startling “Passacaglia” from  Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. 

 It’s a programme that effectively bookends Shostakovich’s relationship with Stalin: at the dictator’s behest, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was denounced in 1936  as a “deliberately dissonant, confused stream of sound”  – yet there’s no confusion discernible here, as lowering horns, brooding strings and dramatic percussion combine to drive home the air of looming menace. 

 But Shostakovich struggled to rehabilitate his reputation through his wartime symphonies, culminating in  1953 with Symphony No 10, which shares the mood of  menace in “Passacaglia”. (Andy Gill)

Hélène Grimaud BRAHMS Concertos

 With a nod of recognition to the composer – who himself let twenty-two years go by after completing his First Piano Concerto before starting on the Second – Hélène Grimaud notes that she’s needed every bit of the fifteen years that have passed since she recorded Brahms’s First to prepare herself for recording No.2. The explanation behind the sheer length of this musical journey lies in the particularly close relationship she enjoys with the D minor Concerto which, among other things, was the first work by Brahms she ever heard. Grimaud can still clearly recall that discovery, though her feelings about it are hard to put into words: “It’s something that completely consumes you, leaving no room for anything else at all – a new universe opens up to you and you just dive right in without a second thought.”

To her, the Concerto represents life itself, our very existence: “You land right in the heart of the action of that existence and there’s no turning back”. She acknowledges that it’s a work she needs, both physically and mentally, highlighting the unadorned, uncompromising side of its nature: “It gives the impression of having been written at one sitting, even though we know that’s not the case”. With reference to the second movement, dedicated to Clara Schumann, Grimaud pinpoints one impassioned, almost prayer-like moment, which has to be played with both intellectual and emotional honesty if the truth of the work is to be brought out: “You can only truly touch an audience if you play with sincerity. Even then, there’s no guarantee, given that we all perceive things in different ways. No single performance can touch every member of an audience in exactly the same way, but at the very least that basic parameter of sincerity has to be present.”

Her relationship with the Second Piano Concerto, meanwhile, is more complex, and somewhat paradoxical. For a long time it seemed less vital to her than the First. She felt its finale, however sublime, was surplus to requirements. “If many people prefer the Second, that’s perhaps because of its intensity of expression. It looks at what life has been, what it is and what it could have been. There’s a kind of nostalgia there, as well as a slightly bitter strain of tenderness.”

Even so, the idea of never broaching the work was unthinkable. She couldn’t imagine going through life without it – because of her relationship with Brahms, an affinity dating back to her childhood. His music gives her a sense of intimacy that she simply accepts, without attempting to explain or justify it in any way.

She began work on the B flat Concerto in 2007, but it took time for her to feel completely at home with it, as she herself recalls: “I was very wary of it. It was as if I were observing both the work and myself in relation to it. There was a distance between us that wasn’t conducive to a truly successful outcome. I learned it, performed it twice, then said to myself, ‘well, mission accomplished, that’s enough for now’.”

Another five years went by before she felt irresistibly drawn to go back to the Second Concerto, and this time to embrace it fully, without reservations. And as she embarked on this new relationship, she also began to feel a similar urge to revisit the First. The thought of one without the other, of recording the Second without the First resurfacing, had become inconceivable.

And so this album project took shape. Grimaud is keen to point out, however, that she did not deliberately set out to reinterpret Concerto No.1: “That’s not the way I work. As you evolve, as you experience certain things, you filter a familiar piece of music t

hrough your new experiences and encounters. In some ways your interpretation changes, in others it stays the same. It’s the idea of reconciling opposites.”

She recorded Concerto No.1 with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and No.2 with the Vienna Philharmonic – her first recording with this prestigious orchestra – both led by Andris Nelsons, a conductor she greatly admires, and with whom she has a strong fellow-feeling. She pays him tribute, saying, “You sense that musicians would do anything for him. I spoke earlier about the essential role played by intellectual honesty when you’re performing, and that’s true here as well. There’s a purity about him which I think inspires a different reaction from his musicians … He has intensity, musical intelligence and a sense of freedom, but there’s also something that emanates from him which has to do with instinct and that purity of intent – and it makes you want to give your all.”

(Jean-Michel Dhuez)