Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1; Two Songs, Op. 91

Stephen Kovacevich's new EMI recording of Brahms's D minor Piano Concerto with the LPO under Wolfgang Sawallisch strikes me as being an altogether exceptional account of this leonine, beautiful, but often elusive work. It is one of those profoundly musical performances, thought out in a myriad small details, that at the same time flows freely and spontaneously from the minds and imaginations of musicians for whom the work is no longer a thing to be mastered but an experience to be wonderingly relived. I should add that the disc also offers the most imaginative and raptly performed fill-ups I ever recall hearing on a Brahms concerto record. The concerto over, Kovacevich is joined by mezzo-soprano Ann Murray and viola player Nobuko Imai for two of Brahms's greatest songs: his setting of Ruckert's beautiful eventide poem Gestillte Sehnsucht and the sublime Geistliches Wiegenlied, a lullaby to the Christ child that bleakly foreshadows the agony that is to come. How wonderfully this song casts its shadow back over the concerto, making us ponder afresh the spiritual meaning of its great slow movement. - Richard Osborne, "Gramophone"