Browse: Presto Recordings of the Year, Brahms (composer)

Nigel Short and Tenebrae have come up with a beautifully balanced and contrasted programme…The beauty of sound and dignified expression of intensity that Tenebrae create in the opening of the... — BBC Music Magazine, Christmas 2015, More…

The Bartok is a revelation.Somehow Jansen manages to coax this music out of its accustomed reticence, but without any sense of forcing it…at last, this concerto really does sing of unrequited... — BBC Music Magazine, March 2016, More…

Volodos, rather like the music, can seem to inhabit a world of his own – removed, remote, yet in steely control of the expression of that remoteness…Volodos is a master of soft and silken tone... — BBC Music Magazine, November 2017, More…

Goerne remains a fine lieder singer … he shows a careful attention to text … he finds a contemplative depth for the Four Serious Songs, however, with the sorrow and tenderness of the second beautifully... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2016 More…

they are substantial pieces in their own right, and they emerge irresistable thanks to the easy flow of Chailly's conducting and the superb playing of his orchestra...Chailly and his orchestra... — BBC Music Magazine, Awards Issue 2015, More…

In 2003 the Belcea Quartet recorded a nerves-on-a-knife’s-edge account of Brahms’s C minor Quartet (Op 51 No 1) for EMI. Here, more than a decade on, their conception retains its essential ferocity,... — Gramophone Magazine, October 2016 More…

His Brahms is as vital, impulsive and rhythmic as all his work strives to be – though not as sheerly dynamic as one might have imagined – but there is blend and bloom, too...he truly listens... — Gramophone Magazine, September 2017 More…

The performance of the Quintet is a fine one, with lovely clarinet tone, excellent overall sound and a deep understanding of the work's varied character…a fascinating issue, with playing of mastery... — Gramophone Magazine, June 2015 More…

Fröst revels in the deep-plush velvet of his chalumeau regions - and, indeed, sustains this timbre throughout the instrument's register...the ensemble creates cutting-edge rhythmic urgency, and... — BBC Music Magazine, September 2014, More…

This [the Brahms] is playing of tremendous incisiveness, highly energetic in both physical and intellectual terms. Brendel traces a powerful thread of development and logic through the set’s... — BBC Music Magazine, July 2018, More…