Word: intermezzi
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After justifiably extensive applause, Upshaw left the stage to Goode, who performed the four short pieces of Brahms' Op. 119, three intermezzi and a rhapsody. The first of the set, the intermezzo in B minor, is the thing of devastating beauty. Though Goode's tempi were excessively free, his princely touch and his formidable intellectual grasp of the music overwhelmed all objections. His performance of the bravura E-flat minor rhapsody was the best of the four, demonstrating superior voicing and clealiness of fingerwork...
BRAHMS: SONATA NO. 3; INTERMEZZI, OP. 117 (Sony Classical). Emanuel Ax whittles Brahms' mightiest sonata down to size in a performance that combines majesty with might. Meanwhile, the mournful, enigmatic intermezzos of the composer's later years get tender, loving care...
...whole record is devoted to Brahms' music, which makes him the most-represented composer in the set: 10 Intermezzi and the Rhapsody in B-minor, Op. 79. The Intermezzi (recorded in 1960) are certainly interesting to listen to, for Gould does some unusual things bringing out the pieces' many inner voices (in the famous B-flat minor, Op. 117, for example). He captures the autumnal quality of these short, profoundly simple pieces. Unfortunately, though, his overly ponderous tempos sometimes lack for dynamic and rhythmic drive. The filler on the disk, the tulmultuous Rhapsody (recorded in 1982), was surely the highlight...
...liner notes reprinted from the original 1973 release Gould, with typical humor, claims that his rendition of the sonata should be considered as definitive because his maternal grandmother was Grieg's cousin.) The same can be said of Gould's performance of the Grieg sonata as of the Brahms' Intermezzi: he emphasizes inner (detractors would say "extraneous") voices, and takes unusually slow tempos. Still, taken on its own terms, the sonata is musically coherent and surprisingly lyrical, especially the Andante Molto second movement, which resembles more than faintly the slow movement of the composer's celebrated A-minor concerto...
Brahms: Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel; Three Intermezzi, Op. 117; Three Intermezzi, Op. 119; Rhapsody, Op. 119 No. 4 (Pianist Van Cliburn, RCA). The Handel Variations are often thought of as a piece that only a pianist, or piano buff, could love. In one of his most appealing albums in years, Van Cliburn puts the lie to that. Leaping from one craggy Brahmsian peak to another as effortlessly as though playing Debussy's Clair de lune, Cliburn gives the work a warm romantic allure yet never loses hold of its classic-baroque underpinnings. What ingenuity...