András Schiff (piano/director), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
ECM · 4855770 · 94 minutes
There’s something genuinely bracing about hearing these concertos stripped of their usual romantic weight, and that’s exactly what Schiff and the period-instrument OAE deliver here. The Blüthner’s lean, wiry sound refuses to let Brahms sink into plush upholstery, so all that dense contrapuntal writing suddenly has room to breathe and argue with itself. Directing from the keyboard rather than ceding to a conductor, Schiff keeps the whole thing propulsive and conversational, like chamber music that occasionally remembers it’s a concerto.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — July 2026 — Critics’ Choice 2021
- Presto Recording of the Week — 4th June 2021
- Gramophone Magazine — July 2021 — Recording of the Month
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2021
“Schiff conducts from the keyboard…securing crisp ensemble and cogent longer-term grasp of structure in his forward-moving tempos…The wiry tone of his restored circa-1859 Blüthner grand may…”
— BBC Music Magazine, July 2021,4 out of 5 stars(Performance) /3 out of 5 stars(Recording)
Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Deutsche Grammophon · 4866000 · 2 hours 45 minutes
Brahms with a chamber orchestra sounds like a contradiction until you actually hear it — suddenly all that thick, autumnal harmony gets lean and quick-footed, and you notice inner voices you’d never caught in bigger, plusher recordings. Nézet-Séguin leans into that clarity rather than fighting it, so the symphonies feel urgent and conversational instead of monumental, like the orchestra is thinking out loud together. Two Building A Library nods for the First Symphony alone tell you the critics keep coming back to this one, and honestly, once you hear how alive it sounds, you’ll understand why.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — September 2024 — Editor’s Choice
- Building A Library — October 2024 — Recommended Recording (Symphony No. 1)
- International Classical Music Awards — 2025 — Nominated – Symphonic Music
- Building A Library — August 2025 — Recommended Recording (Symphony No. 1)
“These are spontaneous-sounding interpretations, sure, but they’re also thoughtful….Indeed, throughout this set, Nézet-Séguin hardly puts a foot wrong, and the COE play their hearts out for…”
— Gramophone Magazine, September 2024
Krystian Zimerman (piano), Maria Nowak (violin), Katarzyna Budnik (viola), Yuya Okamoto (cello)
Deutsche Grammophon · 4864650 · 79 minutes
Brahms poured so much of himself into these two quartets, and the A major especially has this generous, sunlit quality that can slip into blandness if the players don’t dig for the undercurrents. Zimerman doesn’t let that happen — he’s assembled a genuinely responsive group here rather than treating the strings as accompaniment, and you can hear real conversation happening in the inner voices. The C minor gets its due weight too, but it’s the way they find the ache underneath the A major’s warmth that makes this pairing feel so complete.
Awards:
- Presto Recording of the Week — 4th April 2025
- Gramophone Magazine — May 2025 — Editor’s Choice
- BBC Music Magazine — June 2025 — Chamber Choice
- Gramophone Awards — 2025 Winners — Chamber
“The A major Quartet is one of Brahms’s most open-hearted and immediately engaging chamber works. Zimerman and his colleagues deliver a superb performance capturing the outgoing qualities of…”
— BBC Music Magazine, June 2025,5 out of 5 stars
Christian Tetzlaff (violin), Barbara Buntrock, Tanja Tetzlaff (cello), Lars Vogt (piano)
Ondine · ODE1448-2D · 81 minutes
The A major Quartet gets overshadowed by its more turbulent siblings, but that gentleness is exactly the point — Vogt and the Tetzlaffs lean into its warmth without ever letting it go soft or sentimental. There’s a real sense of chamber music as conversation here, each voice yielding and pushing in turn, which makes the C minor Quartet’s darker outbursts land even harder by contrast. Knowing this was among Vogt’s final recordings before his passing adds an ache to the playing that feels earned rather than imposed, especially in those slower interior movements where he seems to be searching for something just out of reach.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — Awards Issue 2024 — Editor’s Choice
- International Classical Music Awards — 2025 — Nominated – Chamber Music
- Gramophone Awards — 2025 Shortlist — Chamber
“Passion and fragility combine to form the essence of Vogt’s art, especially in the context of this wonderful music.”
— Gramophone Magazine, Awards Issue 2024
Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmermann (viola), Jean-Guihen Queyras (cello)
Alpha · ALPHA792 · 75 minutes
Brahms wrote these sextets when he was still young enough to be shameless about beauty, and you can hear it in how the melodies just keep unspooling, generous and unhurried, especially in that famous second movement of the First Sextet. Bringing in Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras to thicken out the Belcea Quartet is exactly the right move here — six players who clearly know how to listen to each other, letting the inner voices breathe instead of getting buried under all that rich low string writing. The result feels less like a performance and more like eavesdropping on a conversation between old friends who happen to be extraordinary musicians.
Awards:
- Record Review — 12th March 2022 — Record of the Week
- Gramophone Awards — 2022 — Finalist – Chamber
- Gramophone Awards — 2022 Finalists
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2022
“The two works have attracted numerous fine recordings, but here a luxury cast of the Belcea Quartet, Tabea Zimmermann and Jean-Guihen Queyras bring us a really special one – full-toned, warm-hearted…”
— BBC Music Magazine, May 2022,5 out of 5 stars
Stephen Hough (piano)
Hyperion · CDA68116 · 68 minutes
There’s something almost confessional about the late Brahms pieces — Opp. 116 through 119 read less like public statements and more like private murmurs to himself, full of autumnal turns and harmonic sighs that never quite resolve the way you expect. Hough seems to understand this instinctively; he doesn’t push these miniatures toward drama they don’t want, letting the Intermezzi breathe with a kind of unhurried tenderness while still finding real weight when Brahms asks for it, as in the stormy Op. 118 No. 3. It’s the sound of a pianist who’s lived with this music long enough to stop performing it and start simply speaking it.
Awards:
- Gramophone Magazine — January 2020 — Recording of the Month
- Gramophone Awards — 2020 — Finalist – Instrumental
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2020
- Gramophone Magazine — Critics’ Choice 2020
“He is tender in op. 118/2 and powerful on op. 118/3. Op. 116/4 sings, and op. 117/2 is delicate, with a lovely touch. In several of these works—op. 116/5 and 6, and op. 117/1, for example—Brahms’s…”
— Fanfare, Jul/Aug 2020
Mark Templeton (trombone), Helen Vollam (trombone), Patrick Jackman (trombone), Alexander Mason (organ)Tenebrae, Nigel Short
Signum · SIGCD430 · 74 minutes
There’s something almost architectural about pairing Brahms and Bruckner motets on the same disc, since both composers were obsessed with sacred choral tradition but arrived at completely different kinds of gravity — Brahms all autumnal melancholy, Bruckner reaching for something more monumental and Gothic. Tenebrae under Nigel Short find the right weight for each, letting the trombone choir add that dark, organ-like richness to the Bruckner without ever tipping into heaviness. It’s the kind of programming that makes you hear both composers more clearly for having heard them side by side.
Awards:
- BBC Music Magazine — Disc of the month
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2015
- BBC Music Magazine Awards — 2016 — Choral Winner
- Building a Library — December 2017 — First Choice
“Nigel Short and Tenebrae have come up with a beautifully balanced and contrasted programme…The beauty of sound and dignified expression of intensity that Tenebrae create in the opening of the…”
— BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2015,5 out of 5 stars
Benjamin Grosvenor (piano)
Decca · 4853945 · 85 minutes
There’s something almost architectural about pairing Schumann and Brahms like this — you get to hear how one composer’s restless, fragmented imagination gives way to the other’s more settled, autumnal warmth. Grosvenor plays both with a restraint that never feels held back, letting the music’s inner voices breathe without ever tipping into indulgence. Those closing Brahms Intermezzos in particular land with a kind of hushed, private tenderness that makes you want to sit very still.
Awards:
- Presto Recording of the Week — 17th March 2023
- Gramophone Magazine — April 2023
- Gramophone Awards — 2023 Finalists — Shortlisted – Piano
- Presto Recordings of the Year — Finalist 2023
“There’s a marble-statue nobility to his playing, a sense of his powerful technique being harnessed to expression, and a seriousness-of-purpose…To end, we hear three of Brahms’s Intermezzos:…”
— BBC Music Magazine, May 2023,4 out of 5 stars(Performance) /5 out of 5 stars(Recording)
