Comparison
Recordings:
Silke-Thora Matthies, Christian Köhn. Naxos 8.553140
Julius
Katchen, Jean-Pierre Marty. Decca 430 053-2
It was this music that made Johannes Brahms a
rich man. Those days were long before our current draconian
copyright laws. He was then free to write this “Hungarian
music” consisting of arrangements of nightclub tunes composed
by “Gypsy” performers. Today he would have been sued and
forced to share his royalties in ruinous proportion. Popular
music it is, and it should be played with the maximum fun
and flourish, which is what we have here, recorded with
brilliant detail in SACD surround sound. As is usually
the case , the CD tracks are also
of excellent quality for those not
owning
SACD
players (though there is the occasional exception which
I remarked up on in other reviews).
It was the very unauthentic nature of these tunes
coupled with their immense popularity that motivated Kodaly
and Bartok to research the real, Hungarian folk music and
enshrine it in their music. And although Brahms publicly
distanced himself from Liszt and the “music of the future” it
was Liszt’s own Hungarian Rhapsodies that pointed his way. Those
works were so difficult that only virtuosi could play them,
whereas Brahms’ works were within the reach of amateur
pianists.
The other versions listed are also excellent in
their own way, but simply don’t have the drive, the verve,
the fun of this version. The Katchen/Marty version in
particular is in dated sound. The Matthies/Köln version
is part of their fascinating and revelatory complete transversal
of the Brahms two piano music; but a perspective based
on complete knowledge of an oeuvre is in this case not
an advantage because these dances are utterly unique in
Brahms’ catalogue. A future musicologist would easily
argue that Brahms did not and could not have written them,
which would count all the more against Brahms in any hypothetical
plagiarism suit.
Brahms’ character was complex, to say the least. He
was a baroque scholar, was capable of exquisite classical
refinement, yet his symphonies are full of primal screams,
and he was heard by a friend to be howling like a dog while
improvising at he piano. In this situation we need to
expand the envelope, that is, we need this utterly uninhibited
performance to stand against the image of the conservative
classicist to round out our picture of this vastly great
musical personality. When he subscribed to the Bach Gesellschaft
publication fund, he listed his profession simply as “tonkunstler” — musician.
Paul Shoemaker
Steven and Stijn Kolacny
(Steinway D piano) 
[52.27] 
for
details
