Brahms : Œuvres pour piano, Vol. 1. Douglas.

Piano International (Jul, 2012)
Blessed with a prodigious technique that saw him take the Gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow (1986), Barry Douglas seemed to allow musicality to come second best in the early days of his career. He has recently taken some time away from the recording studio. It was, it seems, time well spent, for this disc (the first volume of the compete Brahms piano music) reveals Douglas as a new, mature musician. He says in the booklet, ‘I treasure every phrase, I love every note’, something he communicates to the listener.

The programming is interesting, for Douglas splits constituent parts of sets, juxtaposing and intermingling Rhapsody with Intermezzo, …