Krystian Zimerman returns to the world of Johannes Brahms in this Deutsche Grammophon recording of the composer’s second and third Piano Quartets. These two works, while written for the same forces, represent two distinct snapshots into Brahms’s career. The second quartet, written when the composer was 28, has one eye on the past with some particularly Schubertian piano writing in the opening movement. But still very much looks to the future as can be heard in the typically Brahmsian bravura finale. The third quartet, written 14 years later, represents a more sophisticated control of the form – from the melodrama of the Scherzo to the melancholy of the Andante, Brahms’s versatility is front and centre.

Zimerman reflects on the album: ‘I don’t think there is any other composer who has such an account in terms of quality. All Brahms’s chamber music is fantastic – the sonatas, the trios, the Clarinet Quintet. There is no bad piece among them. I particularly love the Third Quartet. It’s crazy. It’s so powerful. It has unbelievable drive.’

One would find it hard to diminish the impact Ravel had on music written for the piano. An impressive feat as quite a few works have been written for the instrument and Ravel, a relatively unprolific composer, produced just 15 works for solo piano. All these works, many of which are mainstays of any concert pianist’s repertoire, appear on this album by French virtuoso Jean-Efflam Bavouzet with Chandos – from the once lost Sérénade grotesque to the mammoth of pianistic technique that is Gaspard de la nuit. And Bavouzet is no stranger to the French impressionist, his 2011 recording of Ravel's Piano Concerto won the Gramophone Award for Best Concerto.

Bavouzet describes the project: ‘I subscribe completely to Ravel’s idea that a composer does not have to be profound in order to write good music. And furthermore, owing no doubt to his modest character, Ravel rarely addresses us in the first person. He does not confide in us intimately except on the rarest occasions. At these exceptional moments, our admiration for this musical giant, for his intelligence and elegant style of writing, for his perfect proportions, give way to a wave of emotion that is difficult to contain.’ 

An enduringly prominent voice in modern British music, Thomas Adès conducts the premiere recordings of three suites based on the music of his theatrical works. This album from the London Philharmonic Orchestra represents the breadth of Adès’s operatic and ballet career. The Luxury Suite from Powder Her Face expands on the earlier Dances suite and draws together eight movements from his notoriously explicit 1995 chamber opera of the same name. Adès pushes the boundaries of orchestration here with the inclusion of a paper bag (for popping), a rattle, a popgun and a lion’s roar!

Five Spells from The Tempest, created for the LPO and premiered in Dresden in 2022, is a condensed reimagining of Adès’s acclaimed 2004 adaptation of the Shakespeare’s otherworldly romance. And the album concludes with the Inferno Suite, a continuous 20-minute journey through hell drawn from Adès’s 2019 ballet Dante based The Divine Comedy.

Raphaël Pichon and his ensemble Pygmalion mark their 20th anniversary with a new recording of Bach’s Mass in B minor, a work that has been central to the group’s repertoire. Having first performed the piece in 2013 and revisited it regularly since, Pichon now presents a recording shaped by over a decade of performance experience with a close-knit group of musicians.

In an interview in the April issue of Gramophone, Pichon describes his long-standing fascination with the work and its details. One example he gives is with the opening Kyrie, particularly the high D in the first violins, which he interprets as a symbol of collective human anguish. He draws on 18th-century performance practices, including the Italian-style slow opening suggested by markings in the Dresden sources. It is also interesting to note that the Mass was written over the course of 25 years, beginning in 1724 as a simple Sanctus evolving to a full 27 movement Missa tota in 1749 – just a year before his death.

German pianist and 2014 Gramophone Young Artist of the Year winner Joseph Moog takes us on a personal journey through the piano music of the Belle Époque. Rather than focusing solely on familiar repertoire, Moog brings together both celebrated and lesser-known works to evoke what he describes as a ‘sentimental state of mind, capturing a time of intense artistic creativity set against growing societal uncertainty.'

The programme includes music by Sibelius, Ravel, and Poulenc, alongside lesser-recorded works by Mel Bonis, Vincent d’Indy, Sergei Bortkiewicz, Moritz Rosenthal, Cécile Chaminade, and Theodor Leschetizky. There are also transcriptions of Rachmaninoff’s arrangements of Kreisler’s Liebesfreud and Liebesleid – certainly an intriguing selection!

Reviews for these albums can be found in the April and May 2025 issues of Gramophone – Subscribe today!