Luis Suñén has reviewed Francesco Piemontesi’s Brahms album with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Manfred Honeck for the Spanish magazine Scherzo, and his verdict is enthusiastic: the result is as exceptional as the first instalment of their Brahms project.
The album brings together the Piano Concerto No. 1 and the Six Pieces, Op. 118, completing, in reverse order of composition, the pair’s plan to record both Brahms piano concertos. Suñén notes that the collaboration between two artistic temperaments that might have clashed in fact works perfectly. On one side he hears Honeck’s powerful sound and tremendous Romantic stamp, with a magnificent Gewandhaus that impresses from the passionate opening bars. On the other, he praises Piemontesi’s elegance, his balance between drive and lyricism, and his more than ample technique. The Op. 118 pieces, like the Op. 117 Intermezzi before them, show an intelligent approach to the twilight Brahms.
Suñén also addresses the criticism sometimes levelled at Honeck for an excess of interpretive imagination, and says he finds no trace of that eccentricity here. He concludes that this version joins the most modern reference recordings of the concerto, those of Grimaud with Nelsons and Freire with Chailly.
Read the full review in Scherzo.