Brahms D minor and the art of the soloist
One piece on my desk this month is Brahms’ Piano Concerto no. 1 in D minor.
I fell in love with the piece as a young teenager when my parents bought an LP of Krystian Zimerman’s recording with the Vienna Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein. The purchase of the record coincided roughly with that of a new, very awesome stereo system, and I played that record so many times at such high volume that I not only actually wore out the record, but probably did permanent structural damage to the walls of my parents’ living room.
I’ve had a fair bit of contact with the piece over the years, having played it many times in orchestra, and rehearsed it for other conductors as an assistant. It’s fun but difficult to conduct. Most recently, I taught it at last summer’s conducting workshop in Portland, where the astounding Rick Rowley played the solo part.
Still, in all those years and many wonderful recordings, nothing has ever quite equaled the impact of that feeling of electric discovery I felt with that Bernstein/Zimerman disc so long ago. I replaced the LP (which I stole from the folks- sorry, guys) with a CD when it wore out, which taught me a tragic lesson. One cannot comfortably play a CD as loudly as an LP- the PCM waveforms have a jagged characteristic which means the sound becomes hard edged and tiring at high volume. SACD is much better than CD if you really want to upset the neighbors with your Brahms, but LPs are still the best.
A few months back, I saw that DG had released the performances on that LP on DVD. Of course, I ran out and bought it.
It’s still wonderful, but not at all what I pictured- somehow, even in the Musikverein, it’s not as glamorous as I expected. Bernstein, it turns out, did not stand 50 feet tall and was not wearing a yak skin loincloth in the performance, and Zimmerman has only two arms, is not bathed in grizzly bear blood and at no point actually eats the piano. I was also disappointed that the orchestra were not wearing any of the traditional Amazonian make associated with “the hunt.”
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