PASC092: Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op. 83 - Brahms; Horowitz, Toscanini, 1948

Notes on the restoration: Pristine Audio has recently received a generous donation of reel to reel tapes containing a number of recordings prepared from original source material for a British collector by Walter Toscanini, son of the Maestro, and taken from the Toscanini archive.

The present recording does suffer from some slight wow and flutter in places. I have succeeded in repairing a number of damaged parts of the original, as well as managing as best possible the abrupt side-breaks in the disc transfers. You will note the rapturous applause which greets the ends of both 1st and 2nd movements, and that the latter is quickly cut off - this, alas is how the recording reached us. There was a similar abrupt cut-off at the very end of the recording, and I have been able to mix in some of the previous applause from the end of the opening movement to create a longer and more appropriate and satisfying ending to that which was originally present.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83 by Johannes Brahms, is separated by a gap of 22 years from his Piano Concerto No. 1. Brahms began work on it in 1878 and completed the piece in 1881 while in Pressbaum near Vienna, and dedicated it to his teacher, Eduard Marxsen.

The piece is in four movements, rather than the three typical of concertos in the Romantic period:

Allegro non troppo
Allegro appassionato
Andante
Allegretto grazioso

The extra movement made it considerably longer than most other concertos written up to that time; a typical performance lasts around 50 minutes.

Despite its ambitious scale, when Brahms sent a copy of the completed score to his friend, the surgeon and violinist Theodore Billroth (to whom Brahms had dedicated his first two string quartets), he described the concerto as "some little piano pieces". In another incident, he called the second movement of this work a "tiny wisp of a scherzo", although it is robust music that lasts for ten minutes; similarly, he had written to his publisher of the generally cheerful Symphony No. 2 (1877) "the score is so sad you won't be able to bear it", also saying the sheet music should be printed with a funeral black border.

The piece was given its public premiere in Budapest on November 9, 1881 with Brahms himself playing the solo part. Unlike the Piano Concerto No. 1, which was rather coolly received, the Piano Concerto No. 2 was a great success, and Brahms went on to play the piece in a number of successful concerts in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, some conducted by Hans von Bülow.