Voyages: Brahms Opp. 116, 117, 118 & 119

Description

Embark on a series of Voyages through the late solo piano music of Brahms with pianist Leopoldo Erice as your guide. Brahms has been Erice's treasured travelling companion throughout his life, from growing up in Spain to travelling as a musician. He has chosen to perform the music of Brahms at key moments in his life - from celebration to loss - and feels a particular kinship with these later works, which are increasingly recognised as miniature masterpieces for their extraordinary structural integration and harmonic subtlety. Erice refers to Brahms's late piano works as "miniatures with a symphonic soul", explaining in the album booklet: "It's as though in his later years he stripped away everything nonessential, committing only the purest essence of his music to the page". The album features the Seven Fantasies, Op. 116, the intimate Three Intermezzi, Op. 117, and the two sets of piano pieces Opp. 118 and 119. These are works that in their relatively brief duration distil the essence of late Brahms: at once forward-looking and valedictory, introspective and daring, reflecting his remarkable imagination in all its rich complexity.