Johannes Brahms, András Schiff, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

András Schiff recorded both piano concertos of Johannes Brahms with the period-instrument Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, directing from the keyboard without a conductor. He plays a Blüthner grand built in Leipzig around 1859, the year the D minor concerto was first performed. The aim, in his words, was “to recreate and restore the works”. The result is a lighter, clearer Brahms than the heavyweight versions most listeners know, while keeping the music's force.

The project grew out of a series of Brahms concerts that Schiff and the OAE gave at London's Southbank Centre in 2019. The two concertos were then recorded at Abbey Road Studios in December 2019, with Stephan Schellmann as Tonmeister and Manfred Eicher as executive producer. The strings play on gut, mostly without vibrato, and the horns are natural horns, which Brahms himself preferred. Schiff leads from the piano, as Hans von Bülow sometimes did in early performances of these works.

The first disc holds the Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15, the second the Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83, written in 1881. In the First, the orchestral opening keeps its weight, yet individual sections can be heard talking to one another. The Adagio becomes intimate and tender, with the OAE's strings and woodwinds in close dialogue with the piano. The B flat concerto opens its Andante with a cello solo of fragile beauty, and later the piano trades lines with the clarinets. The Allegretto grazioso finale stays light on its feet. Throughout, the clear bass of the Blüthner lets orchestral details through that a modern grand tends to cover.

Gramophone made it Recording of the Month, and Michelle Assay called it “a master cleanser of old preconceptions and impressions”. In BBC Music Magazine, Bayan Northcott warned that the wiry tone of the piano may disconcert at first, then praised the clarity it brings. James Manheim at AllMusic heard “wonderfully detailed performances” from a pianist still challenging himself. In Le Devoir, Christophe Huss wrote that the music loses monumentality but none of its impact and energy.

Two CDs on ECM New Series, catalogue number ECM New Series 2690/91, released in June 2021. The booklet carries liner notes by Schiff and Peter Gülke in English and German.