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RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR

June

Whatever Volodos does, you can’t imagine the music going any other way, which is perhaps the definition of a great artist

Harriet Smith rejoices in the masterly pianism of Arcadi Volodos, who lavishes his searching musical imagination and immaculate technical finish on the music of Brahms

Brahms Piano Pieces – Op 76 Nos 1‑4; Op 117; Op 118 Arcadi Volodos pf Sony Classical F 88875 13019-2 (54’ • DDD)

This is one of those discs where a word count is a strange thing. For it needs only four: Go Buy This Disc. Or 4000, trying to capture why it is and how it is that Volodos creates the magic he does. It’s four long years since his quietly astounding Mompou recital (8/13), which put the composer on the map for many and walked off with pretty much every award going. Brahms might seem a very different proposition but Volodos inhabits every note, every phrase with just as much conviction. My only plaint is that there could have been more – we get only the first four out of the Eight Piano Pieces, Op 76, though Opp 117 and 118 are complete. But that is a minor niggle; all these pieces have featured in his recitals and his familiarity with their every phrase is abundantly obvious. And whatever he does, you can’t imagine the music going any other way, which is perhaps the definition of a great artist.

The sound Volodos coaxes from the piano, for starters, is like no one else’s and has been

‘The more explosive writing is always cushioned, with Volodos letting light into the textures’

captured superbly by Sony’s engineers, utterly true to the way he sounds live in concert. It’s one that is entirely devoid of hard edges, with myriad shadings right through the register, as we hear in the agitated opening piece of Op 76. Brahms’s fondness for alto and tenor registers is luxuriantly realised too, though such is the subtlety of Volodos’s voicings that nothing ever becomes opaque. Readings are often broad in terms of pacing, but it has the effect of giving the music time to speak and to register. From the turbulence of No 1 we move to an entirely different world in the second piece of Op 76, here reminiscent of

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14 GRAMOPHONE RECORDINGS OF THE YEAR 2017

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