Brahms: Piano Concertos Nos.1 & 2, Nelson Freire, piano

“Brahms’s infinitely great piano concertos are tailor-made for a pianist of Nelson Freire’s gifts. These include a rare capacity to resolve extreme difficulties with an ease bordering on nonchalance but, more importantly, with an elegance and poetry inseparable from Brahms’s Romantic genius.” This is how Bryce Morrison sums up his liner notes accompanying Freire’s recordings of both Brahms piano concertos. I feel that Morrison has hit the nail on the head.

Both works are mammoth in size and expectations, yet Freire stays in control throughout, displaying just the right amount of grace. The cadenzas in both works are thrilling, all the more so for the performances being live (both recordings are taken from live performances at the end of last year and the start of this year). The piano’s growls in the opening of the Second Concerto are downright scary, making a vivid contrast with the delicacy of what follows. It is refreshing to hear both concertos side by side, as often the First is eschewed in favour of the perhaps more familiar Second.

Morrison’s accompanying notes provide a succinct background to the works and their place in Brahms’s life. The Gewandhausorchester and Chailly offer a truly Brahms-ian backdrop. The inner voices, always so important in Brahms, are balanced perfectly. The overall result of this combination of musicians is an engaging and exciting pair of discs. There is no doubt in my mind as to the permanence of this new addition to the current representation of Brahms Piano Concertos.

About the pianist

Nelson Freire, the Brazilian pianist heard here in both Brahms concertos, was born in 1944 in Boa Esperança and gave his first public performance at five years old. His international career began in 1959 after early competition success, including a prize at the Rio de Janeiro International Piano Competition as a young teenager. Freire was especially known for his long friendship and musical partnership with fellow pianist Martha Argerich, forged as students together in Vienna, alongside a solo career that took in virtually every major concert hall and orchestra internationally, this live pairing of both Brahms concertos with the Gewandhausorchester under Riccardo Chailly sits within that broader, decades-long body of recorded work.