Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 | 
 enlarge | Creators: Johannes Brahms, Simon Rattle, Berliner Philharmoniker, Krystian Zimerman
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Category: Music
List Price: $16.98
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Rating:  12 reviews
Sales Rank: 148941
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
MPN: 000620302
UPC: 028947754138
EAN: 0028947754138
ASIN: B0007IK4L0
Release Date: April 4, 2006
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| Tracks:
| • | Maestoso | | • | Adagio | | • | Rondo: Allegro non troppo |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Brahms' First Piano Concerto is an early work bristling with energy and ambition. This is a concerto of scope, complexity, and expressive power and the best performances capture some of its tragic grandeur and forceful intensity. Those qualities are found in abundance in rival versions by Fleisher-Szell, Curzon-Szell, and Gilels-Jochum, among other worthy interpretations. Alongside those, this one pales, but the artists' many fans will want to hear for themselves how a distinguished Brahmsian like Zimerman and an equally distinguished accompanist like Rattle see this work. They will be rewarded by a thoughtful performance that veers stylistically between a classical reading and a Romantic one. This approach that has some validity if joined to rhythmic alertness and fiery music-making. But Rattle's tendency to clip phrase endings and make frequent tempo adjustments drains tension, while Zimerman tends to eschew legato and slights more-idiomatic, longer-lined phrasing. The Andante suffers more than the outer movements in this regard; only intermittently do the performers approach Brahms' core, while those mentioned above play with the full-bodied tone and passion this great concerto demands. -- Dan Davis
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| Customer Reviews:
 iron fist, velvet glove September 26, 2008
P. Willson (United States)
I've sampled and listened to a few other performances, but this one seems to me to have the finest balance of lyricism, emotional power, and restraint. It's a really beautiful, moving rendition -- delicate, sorrowful, and fiercely joyful by turns. The piano and orchestra are wonderfully collaborative and trusting, and as other reviewers have said, the acoustic quality is unparalleled.
Another Great for the Collection March 9, 2008
Lou K (SF Bay Area, CA USA)
The Rachmaninov piano concerti have always been at the top of my list of absolute favorites and I have collected performances by various artists. This new (to me) pianist does a beautiful job of interpretation, is able to express both loud and tender passages with great finesse. Very clean and articulate playing and the subtle rhythmic interplays (hemiola/polyrhythm) between soloist and orchestra are effectively communicated. I highly reccommend this CD.
Very good, but certainly not "perfect" January 14, 2008
F. Hoffmann (Toronto CA)
This is certainly a very good recording of Brahms' dramatic first piano concerto, but it is far from being perfect. Zimerman claims to have prepared for 10 years for this performance. Unfortunately, there seems to be something like "over-studying" a piece, thinking too much about it. As another reviewer has pointed out here in Amazon, this is the case for this recording.
A very good example is the first few bars of the piano part. How often and for how long must Zimerman have thought about this technically unproblematic but musically highly sensitive introduction? But he completely misses the point, slowing down immediately and using rubato in over-abundance, as if he played a Chopin-Nocturne. It sounds unintuitive and studied, not emotional or dramatic.
Later in the movements' solo-parts, Zimerman surprisingly does not work out the melody-line, so that everything sounds like a great mush of notes. In the chord-clusters, so highly dramatic, he uses "full force" immediately, so that any potential to further increase volume is lost. The drama and the dynamics of these parts get lost.
Zimerman's technique partly compensates for these flaws in interpretation. He is best when it comes to long scales, often ending in staccato, which he plays incredibly fast and clean and fortunately with little pedal. Here, he works out every nuance. In the last movement, which lacks the large chord-clusters and drama of the first, and which asks for nuanced scale-playing, Zimerman's interpretation works very well. Indeed, I don't think this movement can be played any better.
The orchestra, in my opinion surprisingly much criticized for this recording, sounds great. Rattle, who was never received very enthusiastically by the Berliner audience, does a great job working out the drama and the dynamics of the piece. He is not afraid to ask the orchestra to give everything it has when the piece demands it. On the other hand, when necessary, the orchestra works only in the background, never overshadowing the piano. The interplay with the piano is flawless. In general, I have not heard very many recordings with the strings sounding so warm and so beautiful. For this alone I think the CD is worth buying, although it certainly won't compete with Gilels/Jochum and the likes.
 * * 1/2 Zimerman Overthunk This Recording July 28, 2007
John Grabowski (USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The first problem with this performance manifests itself in the third bar of the piano entrance: Zimerman preciously slooows down the last phrase of his opening. While rubato is common, of course, this stress point comes at the very beginning, and to my ears it's not yet *earned.* Nothing's happened yet, but already Zimerman is highlighting the "drama." What drama? It's as though a character enters the first scene of a play already comes on stage chewing the scenery. And that in a nutshell describes what's wrong with this performance. The drama feels forced, studied. Beautifully-played, with some fine moments (the beginning of the development in the first movement, the extremely warm, almost prayerful sound of the orchestra in the adagio just before Zimerman starts banging away ham-fisted with his return), this is still not a very remarkable performance, especially when it swims in a sea with the likes of Gilels/Jochum, Kovacevich/Davis, and Curzon/Boult.
But both Rattle and especially Zimerman peel the layers of the onion a bit too much, instead of living the music and bringing things to a simmer and then a boil. And baby, does this work ever need to boil. But the performers are too busy counting granules of spice rather than stirring the pot and savoring the dish. There's a little too much lin-ger-ing, too many instances of de-li-ber-ate phra-sing. And there are times, such as the counter theme of the first movement, where Rattle tries to slow things down so much that we seem to get into a timeless, tempoless place, a Furtwanglerian spirituality--except that he can't pull it off like Furtwangler could. The result sags rather than induces reveries. Someone else here said this is a more lyrical and subdued PC1. Except, other conductors have pulled off this type of idea better.
In the liner notes Zimerman states that he listened to 80 recordings of the concerto before embarking on this project. (I didn't know there were that many, unless he also has private performances in his collection.) Maybe that's the problem. Sometimes it's best to think less and feel more. The three stars are mainly for superb orchestral playing from the Berliners and isolated sparking moments. With so many great recordings of this on my shelf, however, it remains to be seen if this one will stay there. [Post Script months later: it hasn't.] I really feel bad giving 2 1/2 stars to one of the greatest pianists playing with one of the greatest conductors and one of the greatest orchestras in a work all of them seem born to play, but that's about all the enthusiasm I can muster. The recent Nelson Freire/Riccardo Chailly/Gewandhaus Orchestra recording on Decca, free-spirited with lots of give-and-take, blows this out of the water--in large part because they were *playing* while Zimmie and Rattle were thinking.
mediocre May 31, 2007
Brian Linnell (Omaha, Nebraska)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I really don't care for this reading. Zimerman and Abbado seem to lose the forest for the trees, getting lost in each successive moment to the point that this very lengthy score loses its formal coherence and drags on and on... I found myself checking my watch more than once. Zimerman has a muscular, resonant, gorgeous tone, well-suited to Brahms, and as usual the playing of the Berlin Philharmonic is impressive; but then again that's about all there is to the climactic moments here---big, loud, pretty sound, but to something of a cheap effect, devoid of any adroit interpretive message. And aside from those big cadential moments, there's not much else to hear on this disc but a lot of introspective, "sensitive" milling around. The slow tempi used, especially in the first movement, would require a far more adroit interpretation than this to hold the listener's attention for almost an hour.
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