Frequently Bought Together
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CD Rostropovich/Serkin
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By Ralph Moore
TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Audio CD
My wife bought this for me as a surprise present many years ago, having heard it on the radio and knowing immediately that it was something special. Despite owning it, therefore, for years, I have now only just got around to reviewing it, on the grounds that I find myself returning to it frequently.
I am surprised how often I hear quite seasoned lovers of classical music claim not to like Brahms or chamber music. If I were trying to win someone over, the No. 1 in E minor is where I'd start. Both works are full of sinuous, arching melodies and embrace a wide variety of moods, from bucolic charm to reflective melancholy to impassioned turbulence. Not surprisingly, the later work is much grander and more "symphonic" in character - in the intervening twenty-four years Brahms had written four symphonies - while the earlier work is initially more lyrical but closes with a grand, contrapuntal movement that seems like a homage to Bach.
There is a special appeal in hearing these two venerable gentleman - old friends and great artists both - collaborate. Serkin might have been in his eightieth year when he re-studied and recorded these sonatas but he retains a gentle, fluid touch without sacrificing fire. The piano is slightly more recessed than the 'cello, but comes through beautifully and there is no sense in which Serkin is the junior partner. Rostropovich is his usual dynamic self, producing meaty, resonant tone and making much of lower reaches of his instrument. The recording acoustic is vivid and intimate; we are right on top of the musicians but not unpleasantly so. A classic.
I am surprised how often I hear quite seasoned lovers of classical music claim not to like Brahms or chamber music. If I were trying to win someone over, the No. 1 in E minor is where I'd start. Both works are full of sinuous, arching melodies and embrace a wide variety of moods, from bucolic charm to reflective melancholy to impassioned turbulence. Not surprisingly, the later work is much grander and more "symphonic" in character - in the intervening twenty-four years Brahms had written four symphonies - while the earlier work is initially more lyrical but closes with a grand, contrapuntal movement that seems like a homage to Bach.
There is a special appeal in hearing these two venerable gentleman - old friends and great artists both - collaborate. Serkin might have been in his eightieth year when he re-studied and recorded these sonatas but he retains a gentle, fluid touch without sacrificing fire. The piano is slightly more recessed than the 'cello, but comes through beautifully and there is no sense in which Serkin is the junior partner. Rostropovich is his usual dynamic self, producing meaty, resonant tone and making much of lower reaches of his instrument. The recording acoustic is vivid and intimate; we are right on top of the musicians but not unpleasantly so. A classic.
21 of 23 people found the following review helpful
Format:Audio CD
The balance is not quite right, with the cello too prominent, but once I got used to that the performances started to take me over. Here we have two of the greatest classical interpreters of their time taking us into the special world of Brahms, and they had me thinking about the composer in a way I have not done in years. Most books and articles I have read about him have a lot to say about Beethoven, but I really doubt whether Brahms's music would have been much different if Beethoven had never lived. Both consciously and by instinct, Brahms was the guardian of the great German musical tradition embodied above all in Bach -- a tradition where pure 'absolute' music expressed itself through an intellectual apparatus of polyphonic and structural devices. Since Bach's time Haydn and Mozart had perfected for instrumental music a compositional system usually called the 'sonata' style. Beethoven had naturally picked this up, but what he forced on to it was a special dimension of highly personalised expression, and it is precisely this way of treating it that Brahms turned his back on. With him we are back, in his own deeply original way, to music using the composer to express ITself.
I seem to find that Brahms gets more instinctive understanding from performers than Beethoven does, and I believe quite simply that that is because he understands himself better than Beethoven does himself. Teetering on the verge of incoherence at times was all part of Beethoven's unique greatness, and it is not disrespectful -- quite the reverse -- to say so. I have heard far more good performances than bad ones of these two wonderful sonatas, and the special meaning these particular accounts have for me is not something that I felt at first hearing.
... Read more › Format:Audio CD|Amazon Verified Purchase
In the course of a successful search for the Bach cello suites, Amazon recommended that I try this recording. It was music with which I was not familiar but as I am adicted to Brahms I bought it. It arrived quickly and in good condition. The music and the performance are both superb
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By derbro
Format:Audio CD
With two such artists performing together, my expectations were high. I was not disappointed. The performance is beautiful - in a piece which in lesser hands could be dull. Brahms can be like that, can't he? They play together in the real sense - spiritually as well as technically.
The CD production is all that one would expect from Deutche Gramophon - they've been in the business for a while! Just enough acoustic intimacy and no (discernable) gimmicks.
BUY IT AND ENJOY - I DID.
The CD production is all that one would expect from Deutche Gramophon - they've been in the business for a while! Just enough acoustic intimacy and no (discernable) gimmicks.
BUY IT AND ENJOY - I DID.
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