It's no surprise that the Brahms interpretations of Alexandre Kantorow have attracted attention, beginning with the Piano Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 1, on his earlier album with Bartók and Liszt. Here, he continues with an all-Brahms release featuring the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, the Four Ballades of Op. 10, and the rather uncommon arrangement for the left hand of the Bach Chaconne from the Partita for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004. One wonders what Brahms would have thought of these readings, which are ...
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It's no surprise that the Brahms interpretations of Alexandre Kantorow have attracted attention, beginning with the Piano Sonata No. 1 in C minor, Op. 1, on his earlier album with Bartók and Liszt. Here, he continues with an all-Brahms release featuring the Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor, Op. 5, the Four Ballades of Op. 10, and the rather uncommon arrangement for the left hand of the Bach Chaconne from the Partita for solo violin in D minor, BWV 1004. One wonders what Brahms would have thought of these readings, which are sweeping, dramatic, and bold, but in defense of Kantorow, who when he made this recording in 2020 was just a couple years older than the 20-year-old Brahms who composed the Piano Sonata No. 3, he does find a youthful quality in the sonata and the Ballades that nobody else has quite touched on. Consider the sonata, whose first movement is just shy of three minutes longer than that of Nelson Freire in his classic reading. Kantorow is deliberate, almost epic. It's very easy to have an...
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