Brahms

i don't think i've heard the schumann? i'll keep an eye out. and, yeah, his debussy stuff is numero uno and essential.

This movement is one of his beauty peaks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clfmwC4biTA

as a former brahms sceptic it took me a while to find out that the powerful intro music from the nazis: a warning from history was denn alles fleisch, es ist wie gras from Ein Deutsches Requiem. I don't why I previously didn't like his symphonies either, but I was wrong.

Have you heard Carlos Kleiber's recording of the 4th symphony? I'm not sold on the entirety of Brahms's output either, including some of his more celebrated pieces, but at his best he blows most 19th century composers out of the water.

The 3rd violin sonata, late piano pieces, 1st piano quartet, clarinet quintet, clarinet sonatas, double concerto and the four serious songs are all godly.

I've got Barenboim's 1-4 set. Will check them out.

Brahms really isn't Barenboim's forte imho. Kleiber is on a whole other level, although, true to his selective self, he never recorded the first three. My favourite set is probably Abbado's with the BPO.

Solti for the symphonies here; his takes sound just plain majestic!

I never heard Kleiber in Brahms but he and Toscanini are the only guys whom I can stand doing Beethoven symphonies (I honestly hate Ludwig van though I listen to him anyway sometimes to make sure of my footing!), this because they both invest their Beethoven with a kind of relentless forward motion and don't wallow in the romance or something? Does that sound right? I can imagine him being good for Brahms, too!

Brahms is a bit squared-away (by this I think I mean he doesn't try to surprise you like a lot of artists, instead he plants seeds that later blossom exactly as you expect them to?) but unusually rich and, again, majestic; I've yet to hear anything by him that wasn't a masterpiece at the highest level, including the string quartets which don't seem to get much recognition. He's known for not publishing and/or destroying anything he wrote but didn't personally consider a masterpiece, and I myself have come to believe that legend! I haven't heard all the lieder, choral works, or the piano sonatas, or the requiem mass, but I've spent a lot of time with most everything else. I would personally die for the piano trios, quartets, and the quintet! They have a driving quality that reminds me of rock and roll, frankly! Really super high level rock and roll sans drums and electricity! There's an amazing budget priced Isaac Stern boxset from Sony which I'd like to highly recommend that contains the trios, quartets, violin sonatas + concertos in uniformly excellent versions. The best quintet version I've heard is a recent release by Artemis trio, where it's paired with the Schumann, and both in spirited/agile performances and very hi fidelity sound.

That said, I've recently come to believe that Schumann surpasses Brahms overall! They're similar artists except Schumann has this super-endearing quirky personality thing going on, rippling under the surface of all his music, that Brahms kind of lacks to my ear. Or at least Brahms' personality is more sublime and reserved or something... and where Brahms' notes tend to sound strong and monolithic, Schumann's notes instead invariably sing and sigh!

Artemis quartet rather, with the addition of Leif Ove Andsnes on piano for that disc of quintets.

How could I forget the piano quintet? The string quartets are quite ravishing as well, but with the possible exception of the 1st, I keep unfairly comparing them to Beethoven's (or even Mendelssohn's). Schumann suffers from the same problem (1st string quartet dwarfs the other two imho), but whenever a piano is thrown into the equation, his chamber music is at least as good as Brahms's (I agree that there's something almost rock & rollish about Brahms's chamber works at their manic best, such as the 1st piano quartet). As for the piano pieces, there is no competition, unless we only count Brahms's final essays in the genre.

(Speaking of solo Schumann, there's an excellent complete, 13-disc set by Dana Ciocârlie, from 2017.)

I do love that Artemis/Andsnes quintet recording! Belcea/Till Fellner is also lovely.

Thanks Pomenitul. I have Jorg Demus for solo Schumann, which set has a super mellow sound which I find really appropriate for the smaller melodic pieces but not so much for the more stormy romantic things and I do want to get a second set to complement that one!

So I wanted to do some listening and re-examine my position. I think you're right about the piano being the critical element, for me at least that's mainly where Schumann is surpassing Brahms; in all non-piano works it's Brahms who easily takes the lead. Brahms' symphonies are certainly greater, but his piano concertos aren't, I don't think! Schumann's single piano concerto is so much more concentrated and concise, natural like flowing water, whereas the Brahms piano concertos are like these monstrous and somewhat ponderous things that I tend to lose track of as they go on and on. Brahms' violin concerto however is first-rate and while I don't think I've heard Schumann's yet, somehow I can't imagine it being quite as good; Brahms is just so masterful at writing for strings. I didn't re-listen to these yet, but I remember ranking the Brahms' double-concerto about equal with Schumann's cello concerto, both seeming like minor works overall? I also overlooked some critical things, like the Brahms string quintets and sextets for instance; all those works are nothing less than rarefied and exquisite, and all of them invariably remind me of shimmering color-changing sculptures that kind of levitate in the air -- nothing in Schumann is quite like that! Ditto the clarinet works, which are very, very special indeed.

I re-listened to some of the string quartets of each as well; hard to say whose I prefer ultimately, they're pretty different. They're interesting in particular to me right now (as I'm drawing all these parallels) because Schumann's sound like Brahms, being very strictly fugal/classical with limited melodic elements, and the Brahms' contain the characteristics I associate with Schumann! Brahms' string quartets at least give me the impression of being quite melodic and intensely romantic, though perhaps as you say they're ultimately more comparable to Beethoven than anything else. They certainly resemble the late Schubert ones, which I understand also resemble Beethoven?

I haven't yet spent time with Beethoven's quartets, Beethoven really bothers me for reasons I find hard to articulate; that said, the only string quartet of his I'm familiar with is one I do think pretty amazing, it is the one in Godard's (I think) masterpiece Prenom: Carmen where it is both the score and part of the plot, with the quartet performing it visible on screen quite often! I'm not even sure which quartet it is, I believe it is one of the later "difficult" ones, but it is a very good one all the same! I should probably really hear all those a few times before spouting off more half-baked opinions!

"instead he plants seeds that later blossom exactly as you expect them to?"

this sort of mirrors my recent experiences of initially finding his symphonies whelming at best - but I keep coming back for more and am starting to like them a lot.

Yeah -- I too found they had to grow on me at first, as it were!