JOHANNES BRAHMS

In 1983, on the occasion of Johannes Brahms' 150th birthday, Leonard Bernstein recorded the composer’s great orchestral works with the Vienna Philharmonic. The soloist for the two piano concertos was Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman – one of Bernstein’s favourite musicians in the latter years of his life. The conductor’s sense of symphonic context and Zimerman’s majestic technique make this performance of the First Piano Concerto a major. The two musicians are especially successful in doing justice to the power and passion in Brahms’s first major work with orchestra without ever losing sight of the complex structure.