Korstick Plays the Brahms Concerti

BRAHMS:  Piano Concerti Nos. 1 & 2 / Michael Korstick, pno; Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin; Constantin Trinks, cond . Hänssler Classic HC23082

Having give the world one of the very best sets of the complete Beethoven Piano Concerti, Michael Korstick here applies his skills to the two concerti of Brahms in a set scheduled for release next month. As Ernst Denert described the process in the liner notes, these recording were made the old-fashioned way: in the studio, with the best parts of each take spliced together to make a whole that Korstick and Trinks decided on. So at least from that standpoint, the recording has a perfection about it that is sometimes difficult to achieve in the concert hall.

But Korstick’s meticulous attention to detail is certainly not limited to his selection of takes or portions of takes of his recordings. He has been noted, ever since his Juilliard days in the 1980s, for his ability to research a work beyond whatever edition of the score he is working from. He tries, whenever possible, to consult autograph scores as well as printed ones. He listens carefully to recordings made by pupils and favorite interpreters of the composer he is working with. In this way he tries to get to the core of each work and try to present it as much as possible the way the composer conceived it.

Of course, there are always gaps in such a system, particularly in the case of composers who left no recordings. Brahms left us but one terrible-sounding Edison cylinder from December 1889, playing his own Hungarian Dance No. 1 and Josef Strauss’ polka-mazurka Die Libelle; yet though his music for the piano was masterful, contemporary accounts—some of which are cited in the booklet for this CD—suggest that Brahms himself was a technically flawed pianist, thus even if his recording was in perfect condition we would not get much from it. Both famed accompanist André Benoist and orchestra manager Berta Geissmar, who worked for Wilhelm Furtwängler from 1921 to 1934 and then for Thomas Beecham from 1935 until her death, knew people who had heard Brahms play his concerti and confirmed that he made numerous mistakes and hit several klunkers—which is perhaps one reason why he liked slow tempi.[1] But I listened to this cylinder on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H31q7Qrjjo0) and one thing came through clearly, and that was that, at least in this one recorded performance, Brahms played his own Hungarian Dance a bit quicker than the written tempo in the score.

I bring all this up as a preface to my review of this recording to illustrate one thing that I’m sure that Korstick is aware of himself as a performer, and that is that truly creative artists, himself included, take risks in live performance that contradict the written score. Korstick is very circumspect about posting live performances of himself on YouTube, but there is one utterly remarkable performance there of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 32 which, although staying within the parameters of the score tempo, is much more exciting than his studio recording of the work (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow8Q6rUYHPE). And he is not alone. Beethoven, in particular, was noted for his dynamic, exciting yet at times technically imperfect performances of his own piano concerti. Pierre Monteux once owned a copy of the score of Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique marked up heavily by his former boss, Eduard Colonne, who made numerous changes in the score the one time he heard Berlioz himself conduct the work (Monteux’s 1930 recording of the symphony includes those changes). And Serge Prokofiev often played his own piano works so differently from the way they appeared in print that one piano student (I forget now who it was) who dared play a Prokofiev piece the way Prokofiev himself played it was told by his piano teacher that if he did such a thing again he would flunk him.

But again, I’m sure that Korstick is aware of these anomalies. They’re part of the classical world’s lore and legends, yet as in the case of the Beethoven Concerti, his choice was to simply go to the score and give the listener what is there, imbuing his performances with life and energy while still sticking to what is on the printed page.

Which leads us to the first movement of the Piano Concerto No. 1, taken at such a slow tempo (quarter note = 136) that I was shocked when I first heard it; but then I downloaded the score from the IMSLP Petrucci Music Library—a copy of what is purported to be the 1875 first edition, published in Leipzig by Winterthur, J. Reiter-Biedermann—and was stunned to discover no metronome markings. The first movement is simply marked “Maestoso” at a 6/4 tempo, and this in itself surprised me, since “Maestoso” is a tempo slower than “Andante,” and Andante or quicker is the way I’ve been used to hearing it. When I wrote an email to him questioning this, he responded thus:

There are many ways of doing it, to be sure. The score simply says “Maestoso”, and it’s in 6/4. One could make a valid case for a quicker tempo by arguing that “Maestoso” is not a tempo indication and that the pulse is in two – most performances go that way. I learned the piece in the early 1970’s and the only recordings I knew at the time were Arrau, Fleisher, Serkin, and Barenboim, the usual suspects. And then came the Gilels/Jochum recording, and I thought it was a revelation, confirming what I always thought the piece should sound like. A lot of recordings since then tried to imitate that approach, but they all fail to keep the structure organized (after the exposition they all get faster and the tempo is all over the place), and most of them lack the intensity which is necessary to “fill” the slow tempo… when you have grown to like a certain tempo in a piece it is very disturbing to hear something totally different, particularly when it’s slower, I can absolutely see your point. And it doesn’t help that Glenn Gould set a very bad precedent with his ridiculous performance with Bernstein. The important thing is to determine the exact point from which on an even slower tempo doesn’t work any more and take everything from there (same thing goes for fast tempi where most of the time an “even faster” tempo brings absolutely nothing).

There are a few recorded performances of people closely connected with the Brahms circle which tell a different story. I should mention a recorded performance of the 1st concerto by Alfred Hoehn with Max Fiedler (a Brahms adlatus) which is quite “slow”, and we have a recording by Elly Ney (who performed both concertos under Brahms’ friend Fritz Steinbach in the 1910’s) which is VERY SLOW. This is enough evidence to prove that the 1st movement of Concerto #1 is meant to be “Maestoso” in the true sense of the term. Just as interesting is a performance of the 2nd Concerto by Carl Friedberg, who was taught by Brahms himself. His slow movement of the 2nd is living proof that Brahms’ metronome mark of 84 is a mistake, Friedberg takes it at 60 (as I do).

But the first movement of the Gilels-Jochum Brahms First Concerto is taken at a tempo of quarter note=142, which in the soft section he lowers to quarter=140—certainly slower than most other recordings but not as slow as Korstick’s. Checking online, I learned that a Maestoso tempo ranges from 128 to 156 beats ber minute, thus Korstick’s tempo falls into that range, but Emmett Ankending, on TheMusicDictionary.org, adds that Maestoso is “often associated with triumphant and heroic music.” I personally wouldn’t take it any slower than quarter=142, otherwise it drags when you get to the more relaxed middle section. So, to summarize all of the above, the Korstick-Trinks performance of the Concerto No. 1 may not be the way Brahms wanted to hear it all the time, but it clearly represents a choice for the performer.

In addition to this, Korstick conspicuously avoids the slowing-down of the piano part upon his entrance in the first movement of the first concerto as well as similar slowing down of tempo in other portions of both concerti. Add to this the fact that we know that Brahms originally conceived his first piano concerto as a duo-piano sonata (what a strange idea!) but was then transformed into what would have been his first symphony, constantly consulting his friend Julius Otto Grimm who was better schooled in orchestration than the largely self-taught Brahms, but after living with it a while and being dissatisfied with it, the composer changed it into a concerto. Yet even its first performance, in this form (with Brahms himself as soloist), drew pans from critics who found it bleak, dry and overlong, one complaining that “this retching and rummaging, this twitching and pulling, this patching together and ripping apart of empty shells and clichés one has to bear for more than three quarters of an hour!” Ah, the life of a contemporary composer. It never was easy, was it?

Examining the score of this first concerto I was struck, despite the absence of metronome markings, with Brahms’ incredibly detailed and frequent changes of volume and key, but not of tempo. That stays steady as a rock, even in the second-movement “Adagio” despite such urgent pleadings by the composer to play certain passages “espressivo ,” “dolce,” and yes, his favorite word, used over and over, “legato.” Beethoven was really into con brio; Brahms was into legato. It was practically his mantra. And yet, just as Beethoven wrote some very slow, profound and emotionally moving music to counteract his con brio, we have to remember that Brahms’ first gigs as a musician were playing polkas, waltzes and czardases in the whorehouses of Leipzig, including some with Hungarian gypsy violinists, which gave him the ideas for his Hungarian Dances, the Liebeslieder Waltzes and those marvelous gypsy-music-inspired last movements of his Piano Quartets (especially No. 1, the “Rondo alla Zingarese”), thus one must always counter his relaxed tendencies with forward propulsion.

And that is what we get in this performance of the first concerto: slow, but muscular and energetic. As promised, Korstick does not introduce a decelerando when he enters, but keeps the musical tension up. Once you get used to this “new,” slower tempo, you can just sit back and enjoy all the intricate little details they put into the performance. The loud explosions of strings and brass certainly wake you up after Brahms has just lulled you into relaxation with his low-string legato. In places I felt that Trinks was channeling a bit of Toscanini, one of whose trademarks was an extremely wide dynamics range, and Korstick has clearly not forgotten that Brahms always tried to inject some of Beethoven’s traits into his own music. Nonetheless, it is clearly different from most other recordings of the work although closer to the score. Careful listening reveals Korstick adding numerous little rubato touches, making his playing far more detailed than that of most of his predecessors.

Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that by making this opening movement more “Maestoso” than usual, it was only marginally a bit quicker than the second movement. Perhaps this is the reason why most performances and recordings speed up that opening movement a bit more than the score suggests. At the same time, however, I kept thinking that their performance of the second movement “floated” a bit too much, meaning that it didn’t have an underlying momentum, slow though it may be and score-accurate as it is. But in this case it’s partly Brahms’ fault: remember how I commented, a few paragraphs ago, about all of Brahms’ pleas for espressivo dolce, etc.? Perhaps, by paying such close attention to the score, Korstick and Trinks let the directions lead them into a more relaxed state of affairs. But in a way, I think the somewhat dry sound of the recording studio contributed to this feeling. It’s just my impression. The third movement, however, is absolutely terrific.

Moving on to the second concerto, we hear a performance that is both very good and for the most part more orthodox in tempo and phrasing. Much of this recording reminded me of the superb Backhaus-Böhm reading for Decca around 1967, which happened to be the first I ever heard. One difference is that Korstick, who is younger than Backhaus was at the time, plays with even greater energy; the lively first-movement rhythms practically leap out of your speakers. The other is that Trinks, who is likewise younger than Böhm was at the time, again relaxes his grip in slow passages to allow the music to “float,” and this, to my ears, doesn’t work quite as well. But then, I’m listening very critically on a moment-to-moment basis. Someone who is just playing it and not being so critical may enjoy it more than I do. Oddly enough, I found the tempo of the “Andante” to be just right, and here Trinks does nudge the music forward.

There is a much-praised set of the Brahms Concerti by the late Nelson Freire with the Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Chailly (Decca) that is surprisingly analogous to these Korstick recordings. Although Freire and Chailly take the last movement of the Concerto No. 2 a bit quicker than Korstick-Trinks, their performance is otherwise nearly identical to Korstick’s recording; heard from a slight distance, I would defy anyone other than Korstick to tell in the first three movements whether it is Freire-Chailly or Korstick-Trinks. In Concerto No. 1, however, both the first and third movements are faster, particularly the first which they take at the outer limits of a Maestoso, quarter=155. David Hurwitz, executive editor of Classics Today, claims on a YouTube video that “a Brahms expert” (no name given) listened to the Freire recordings and claimed them the best she had ever heard. Like Korstick, Freire does not slow down when he enters in the first movement of Concerto 1, and overall the performance is absolutely electrifying, the best I’ve ever heard, although the sonics of this concerto, recorded at a live performance, do not reveal as much textural clarity as Trinks does (for that matter, neither does Jochum).

The bottom line, however, is that one must take historical evidence such as the Hoehn-Fiedler recording, which I own (it’s on Arbiter 160), into account in judging this set. Compared to Korstick and Trinks, Hoehn and Fiedler take it a shade faster, at quarter=143, but only to start with. Fiedler, like Jochum, slows down considerably in the soft section, and even more later on (and even further just before the piano’s entrance). Trinks introduces just a little bit of tempo relaxation in the slow section following the powerful opening, and compared to both Fiedler and Jochum, he conducts much more powerfully. Yet it’s odd, once again, that in trying to be historically correct, Korstick and Trinks, like so many other such performances of music from any previous era, ignore the heavy rubato effects of the old days. But of course, what Max Fiedler did in 1936 may or may not have reflected Brahms’ original intentions. Rubato and rallentando effects had so permeated the classical world even as early as 1900 that had nothing to do with the composers’ original intentions, in every genre including opera and chamber music, so we really don’t know what the composers wanted. It is an historical fact that Brahms greatly admired 13-year-old Bronislaw Huberman’s performance of his violin concerto, and both of Huberman’s surviving performances of this work are taken at a brisk tempo—but with tons of portamento thrown in. This, too, was performance practice in the 1890s and early 1900s that we now consider gauche—in violin music, specifically, it was killed off by Joseph Szigeti and Jascha Heifetz—but BRAHMS LIKED IT! (He even told Huberman that he would write a violin fantasy for him, but died before he could get around to it.)

Thus whatever your personal reactions to the very slow first movement of Concerto 1, this is clearly a valid and at times exciting set of the Brahms Concerti. The sound quality is excellent although I would have put a little more “space” around the instruments. Recommended as an alternative to whatever set of these splendid works you already own.

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!

[1] Geissmar, Berta: Two Worlds of Music (Da Capo Books, 1946, digitized by Google Books in 2006)