Brahms: Piano Concerto No.2, 4th movement - Filippo Faes, soloist

This video features the great Italian pianist Filippo Faes in a magnificent performance with Volker Hartung and his Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded during a concert at Hamburg's Laeiszhalle in Germany.

The audio recording is also available in 24-bit/48 kHz HD-Audio as part of a 2-set-album, including the first Piano Concerto presented on all media platforms and at:
http://spoti.fi/2qDdXZl.

Jerry Dubins, the music critic from Fanfare Magazine in the USA, has written a fabulous and legendary review about Brahms's piano concertos with Italian pianist Filippo Faes and the Cologne New Philharmonic under the direction of Volker Hartung.
Here is the link:
https://bit.ly/3UkSal5

The Review:
"... My long-held theory, that pianists who do well by Brahms’s First Concerto are apt to do less well by his Second, and vice-versa, has now been turned on its head by Faes; and with a performance of the Second Concerto like this, no one could be happier than I to be disabused of an idea worthy of the scrapheap.
The finale is one of those emotionally ambiguous movements in which Brahms turns a jaunty, happy-go-lucky sounding tune into a grim, march-like juggernaut. The two personalities clash and vie against each other in a constant battle for dominance, creating a very unsettled and unsettling feeling. And once again, the whole drama is driven by fierce rhythmic conflicts, which, in turn, drive this performance like none other I’ve heard.

Having heard Filippo Faes’s accounts of Brahms’s two piano concertos, I would like to know how it is possible for a pianist of this stature to be virtually unknown, at least here in the States? These performances alone should vault him to the
top echelon of artists on the world stage today. That said, you may have noticed in the above that I have fairly consistently named Faes and Hartung together as a pair, and that is because Volker Hartung and the Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra are players as crucial to these performances as is Faes. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a conductor and orchestra as in sync with a soloist as are Faes, Hartung, and the New Cologne Philharmonic, not just in terms of technical matters such as coordination and balance, but in terms of a shared interpretation of the music and an
absolute conviction in that vision. The two Intermezzos included as encores at the end provide a few moments of calm to breathe, contemplate, and come down from the high of the two concertos.
These are “live” performances, taped in three different venues—Bremen, Hamburg, and Cologne—so the recorded sound varies somewhat based on hall acoustics. Applause is included at the ends of the Second Concerto and Intermezzos, but not the First Concerto, and the occasional cough and rustle from the audience is audible.

These are very special performances, and I hope that these recordings will lead to the much wider recognition that Filippo Faes deserves.
Jerry Dubins

More information at: www.jpk-musik.com

JOHANNES BRAHMS (1833-1897) The B flat Piano Concerto Op 83, Brahms' second and last, is one of the greatest works in the repertoire, the largest regularly performed. It is one of the most romantic and appealing of Brahms' works. What makes it so unique is the insertion of a scherzo movement in second place, between the first and slow movements, which makes it a symphony with piano accompanied. Brahms began the Second Concerto in 1878 during a journey to Italy. Once he completed the score in July 1881, he sent it to his friend Theodore Billroth, who was both a surgeon and a musician. Brahms had written several chamber music works for Billroth, who had been with Brahms during his Italian excursion.
When he sent the manuscript to him, he enclosed, with his score, a message, "I am sending you some little piano pieces." Those "little piano pieces" turned out to be a four-movement work nearly an hour in length, a work grander than any of Brahms' symphonies, of greater scope than any concerto written by any composer to that day, surpassing even Beethoven's Emperor Concerto.
The premiere in Budapest in 1881 with the composer as a soloist was a great success. After several months, he performed the concerto to enthusiastic audiences in a dozen European cities.