Sonata for violin & piano No. 1 in G major ("Regen"), Op. 78
Scherzo for violin & piano in C minor (third movement of "F-A-E Sonata"), WoO posth. 2
There is no shortage of recordings of the Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, but there is a niche for this one: it is a superb reading in the Russian tradition, with modern Super Audio sound from Sweden's BIS label. Vadim Gluzman, a Ukrainian-born Israeli, comes in right between Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrakh, capable of both sharp attacks and dreamy cantabile, with a surface sensuousness that perhaps masks a good deal of thought about the longer line. Surely the first movement of the Brahms concerto is ...
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There is no shortage of recordings of the Brahms Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77, but there is a niche for this one: it is a superb reading in the Russian tradition, with modern Super Audio sound from Sweden's BIS label. Vadim Gluzman, a Ukrainian-born Israeli, comes in right between Jascha Heifetz and David Oistrakh, capable of both sharp attacks and dreamy cantabile, with a surface sensuousness that perhaps masks a good deal of thought about the longer line. Surely the first movement of the Brahms concerto is exquisitely balanced among its parts. Sample starting a bit after eight minutes in, where the main thematic material returns and, if properly handled as it is here, gives you a mighty thrill as you realize the material is a lot more complex than you thought it was. The entire 22-plus minutes of the movement have a rare coherence, with the difficult Joseph Joachim cadenza at the end seeming not at all a dutiful display of technical chops, but an organic part of a highly varied landscape....
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