Oh my Gawd!!  Where's the garlic? I've entered the Dead Zone!


 Can a line be drawn between legitimate interpretation - Stowoski/Klemperer, Lipatti/Richter and something that is very well played but just WRONG?
 CD Review opened at 9am this morning with Tiberghien performing Brahms Waltzes ( On L/A)  IM(oh so)HO the music did not sound in the least like music written by Brahms. This is not how Brahms should be played, Brahms is turning in his grave. At the very least Mr McGregor should have admitted he needed oxygen before making his well-meant anodyne remarks. Someone tell me I'm not going mad.

  I feared someone was going to ask that Descombes, my facile remarks obliging me to lay bare my utter inability (having no technical knowledge) to objectively analysis a performance.
     First, I repeat it did not sound like Brahms. Brahms has perhaps most recognizable sound in 19c music-2 bars, sometimes 2 chords and you know you could be listening to no-one else; well may be, on occasion, Schumann will come to mind but not for long. and I thought Tiberghien went out of his way to present us with an alien sound-world; cool, light, disinterested and a little hurried-not Germanic in any way. Brahms is noted, is he not, for bringing together, the weight and the almost mathamatical serious fugal form of Bach's music and the rich romanticism of his own time, the firm scholarly form giving a base for the deep,velvety, romantic flights of imagination which has led many to question if there was any less subjective feeling written into his music than there is in the work of his friend Schumann and indeed the source could be the same person.

  It is of course possible to accentuate one or other side of Brahms' musical personality in performace; the line, the studied scholarstic style of a Pollini, or the caressing, loving touch of a Rubinstein. The greatest perfomances will combine the two sides of Brahms but fine performances by either of these musicians will be a work of art and a true reflection of aspects of the composer's genius

 Tiberghien ,for me, does not fall between these two sides of Brahms as much as turn away towards a 20 c style of detached and, I repeat, disinterested style of piano playing which is foreign to the music of Brahms

 I guess I have now weakened rather than enhanced my argument but that is the best I can do I'm afraid.

Thanks, Ted, for your interesting thoughts. I think I will try to listen to the Radio 3 replay before making any comments. One thought though: could it be that it's the Waltzes, rather than the playing, which are not typical of Brahms. They are not serious, Germanic, weighty, etc. Could it be that the "recognisable Brahms" you refer to is best seen in the later works, culminating in the four sets of pieces, Op 116 - 119?

It would have been helpful if we had heard some of the other pieces from the CD for comparison. I will do some listening and then give the matter some more thought. Thanks, Ted, for broaching an interesting subject. (And I am sure that a lack of technical knowledge has no bearing on whether someone can be a discerning listener or not!)

Just listened.
Can't say that I'm very familiar with these pieces, but for what it's worth, my first impressions are that it sounds a bit like Schubert... quite a Classical sound. There are aspects that make me think of Liszt but overall it's a clean crisp sound. Is this in the notes or in the technique? Does it have something to do with the recording technology, the piano or something else? Interesting.

<writes down the term 'tossy' to be looked up later>

It looks almost as if he had composed them with the specific brief to make them playable by well-known crêpe pianist Oliver Sudden. I too shall give them a bash next time I'm within reach of a piano.

(you need to look up tossy but didn't need to look up goanna?)

Oz slang for piano

http://www.abc.net.au/classic/goanna/

I am something of an admirer of Mr Tiberghien since I heard a performance he gave of the Debussy preludes, a brave almost foolhardy approach to playing with everything given to the music and no safe playing, a real musician interested in communicating his view of the musicand truly enthralling for this listener at least. 
I could well imagine that he is the sort of player to polarise opinions and although I haven't yet heard his Brahms I will look forward to it, I could not imagine him being dull, or seeming to place place accuracy above emotional intensity, as one or two younger players seem to.