Brahms/Joachim: Hungarian Dances

'This is a magnificent release. Shaham and Erez have thoroughly absorbed a style that demands continual flexibility, playing together with such ease that it's easy to forget the art and care that have gone into achieving such beautiful ensemble' --Gramophone

'Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez complement each other perfectly here, evincing fire, fury, and sweet sadness, and they act as a brilliant showcase for Joachim's work both as an arranger and a composer' --BBC Music Magazine

'This recording by Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez is probably the most dazzling that I have heard' --American Record Guide

'Though the pieces themselves may be highly virtuosic (on second thought, forget the ‘may be’), Shaham hardly allows these built-in difficulties to be obvious, so intent does he seem in communicating their impassioned rhetoric…Arnon Erez plays the piano parts of Brahms’s pieces with a liveliness and sympathy…Urgently recommended' --Fanfare, USA

'These deservedly popular pieces overflow with charm and infectious melody … Hagai Shaham and Arnon Erez sound right inside the idiom, playing with an infectiously relaxed bravado wherever necessary, while inflecting those timeless phrases with a suave confidence and relaxed inevitability that prevents them ever straying into camp 'geepsy' territory …

There is a subtly understated charm about these performances which I enjoyed a great deal, gently cajoling us into its colourful sound-world rather than hustling us in. Most importantly, Shaham always gives the music a distinct Brahmsian lilt …Many recordings provide just the Hungarian Dances, but Hyperion includes a typically inventive 'filler' in the form of Joachim's E minor Varations … Calum MacDonald provides an exemplary booklet note, and the recording is convincingly balanced, capturing Shaham's lithe, glistening tone to a tee' --International Record Review

MP3 320 · 143 MB

Brahms, Stravinsky: Violin Concertos

The Brahms and Stravinsky Violin Concertos make an unusual and refreshing pair for Hilary Hahn's fourth Sony release. More importantly, her performances are stunning. In both works the young violinist's breathtaking technique, commanding tone, and supreme musical intelligence inform and uplift everything she touches. She adjusts her sonority to Brahms' many swings of mood, from the fiery abandon of her first-movement entrance to her auburn-tinged legato phrasing in the slow movement.

Many violinists make the Rondo's main theme emphatic and choppy, as Kyung Wha Chung does in her recent EMI recording. By contrast, Hahn imparts greater line and continuity without underplaying the movement's jaunty energy, and her phrasing of passagework and virtuosic runs is always governed by overall melodic shape. One revealing case in point occurs in the first movement, where Hahn phrases the two-note sequences over the barlines in a syncopated manner as Brahms asks, rather than on the beat. Those who contend that Brahms was a heavy, thick orchestrator should pay attention to the sheer timbral and textural diversity Neville Mariner unearths in this score. Listen, for example, to the dancing woodwind trills in the third movement, or to the first movement's pointed string pizzicatos (measure 445) against delicate, sustained wind chording.

As for the Stravinsky Concerto, Hahn and Marriner deliver a gorgeously integrated, urbane, and acerbic reading that matches the dash and sparkle of the Perlman/Ozawa/Boston reference version listed above--and then some. Hahn's program notes cogently combine personal observation with succinct musical commentary. Add Sony's ravishing sonics and you've got a major release from one of today's major violinists (you wonder if even Kreisler, Huberman, or Szigeti played so well at 21). But don't forget Marriner and his superb Academy of St. Martin in the Fields: they're anything but your typical backup band! --Jed Distler, ClassicsToday.com

MP3 320 · 132 MB

Brahms: Symphony No. 2, Double Concerto

After struggling to complete his first symphony, Brahms composed his Symphony No 2 with ease and the work overflows with a relaxed, pastoral beauty. His Double Concerto is laced with a fiery gypsy passion and pitches violin and cello against orchestra.

Gramophone
Editor's Choice

Classic FM
CD of the Week

'the finale heaves with manic elation ... The Double Concerto is equally intense. [Gordan Nikolitch and Tim Hugh] are infintely expressive, never showily flamboyant. They are very much the equal of starrier pairings who have recorded the work before' --The Times

'a classic recording' --The Independent

MP3 320 · 158 MB

Brahms: Handel Variations, Etc

Gramophone Awards 2011: Best of Category - Instrumental

“Time and again Brahms's potential for strenuousness and opacity is clarified with a superfine musical intelligence and technique...I doubt whether the concluding and exultant fugure has often been given with a more formidable yet lightly worn articulacy in its entire history...you may well wonder when you last heard a pianist with a more patrician disregard for all forms of bloated excess of exaggeration.” --Gramophone Magazine

“His long experience with Bach's keyboard works gives him a natural point of entry to the Variations on a Theme of Handel, which is taken at quite fast tempos...Yet Perahia never draws attention to the technical challenges, and the music seems to flow out of him with complete naturalness.” --BBC Music Magazine, February 2011 *****

“The middle period Rhapsodies are beautifully rounded. with the composer's bold heroics matched with lyrical, poetic playing. The final ten pieces are intimate and reflective, played with an intense mastery that is wonderful.” --Classic FM Magazine, February 2011 *****

“This an astonishing performance, full of superb understanding and technical mastery...His command of the work is complete” --International Record Review, January 2011

“one of [Perahia's] finest CDs yet. The set of Handel Variations is both elegant and totally authoritative...Excellent, vivid recording makes this an indispensable example of Perahia's special identification with the composer” --Penguin Guide, 2011 edition

MP3 320 · 172 MB