Search - Johannes Brahms, Idil Biret :: Brahms: 51 Exercises, WoO 6

An amazing - and extremely unusual - recording

Hans U. Widmaier | Elmhurst, IL USA | 10/12/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"You have to understand what this is to appreciate it, and to avoid disappointment (the prior reviewer evidently had no idea). It's a recording not of piano music, but of piano exercises. Of the best, and hardest, piano exercises ever written. When he was a young man, Backhaus was so devoted the Brahms 51 that he took them with him on tour. Horowitz practiced them. So has virtually every professional pianist since then. This recording isn't pretty or easy to listen to. But it's completely fascinating. Unless you walk through the practice rooms at Juilliard or Curtis (or you practice them every morning yourself) you're not ever going to hear these "pieces" played. Having solid command over the Brahms 51 pretty much means you're a professional-caliber piano player.



So you say - OK, but why on earth would I want to listen to this? Because they're by Brahms. They give deep insight into the working of his mind. They show how Brahms thougt about the instrument he loved most. They're amazingly creative. As any pianist will appreciate, each one of them solves a deep technical problem that the instrument poses. They let you see the building blocks from which Brahms constructs his compositions. And last but not least, they really sound like Brahms. Despite being "just" exercises, they have Brahms's darkness, grit, melancholy. They have an eerie beauty about them, a tortured, haunting quality not unlike the Paganini Variations. They transcend their function as exercises and become a strange, and strangely compelling, music in their own right.



Idil Biret does a fantastic job with this exceedingly challenging music. She deserves our greatest thanks for making this recording, which by its very nature refuses any attempt at commercialization. Truly, this must have been a labor of love."