Presto Recording of the Week
4th June 2021

Gramophone Magazine
July 2021
Recording of the Month

András Schiff (piano/director), Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment

Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15
Brahms: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat major, Op. 83

“My enthusiasm for Brahms goes back to my youth, and the piano concertos are largely responsible for it,” writes Sir András Schiff in a liner note for this remarkable new recording. It finds the great pianist reassessing interpretive approaches to Brahms in the inspired company of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. To fully bring out the characteristics of Brahms’s music Schiff’s choice of instrument is a Blüthner piano built in Leipzig around 1859, the year in which the D minor concerto was premiered. The historically informed Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment plays with the flexibility, attitude, and responsiveness of a chamber music ensemble, as they work without a conductor, listening attentively to each other. András Schiff’s collaboration with the orchestra in a series of concerts was widely acclaimed: “Brahms’s First Piano Concerto was reborn thanks to the OAE’s incisive playing and András Schiff’s characterful phrasing”, The Guardian exclaimed. The musicians’ mutual wish to recapture the experience led to the present double album, recorded in London in December 2019. An extensive CD booklet includes liner notes by András Schiff and Peter Gülke in English and German.