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