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Never previously issued, direct from the pianist's own archive
Review of this release: Classic Record Collector, Summer 2009
Notes on the recording: Prior to the discovery of this live broadcast recording, the only previously published (in any form) recording of Peter Katin performing either concerto by Brahms, was this first concerto for the 1962 film The L-Shaped Room. When I asked Peter how this had come about, he replied: "I made a recording of edited bits of the Brahms (first movement) for The L-shaped Room, but it was nothing like a performance. The film was produced by Bryan Forbes and God knows why he wanted the Brahms as background music!" This present recording is therefore a real rarity. As Dr. Katin notes: "I had prepared the Brahms before I met Sir Clifford Curzon in 1949. Five hours of inspiring words opened a door for me and I wanted to relearn everything; well, I certainly took the Brahms apart in time for the Glasgow performance. "Invited audience" really meant that the BBC only paid the artist's studio fee while the audience came in on free tickets. The performances were never repeated and I'm sure that in accordance with a somewhat shaky policy, the tapes were destroyed after about four years - a procedure that deprived us of hearing Lipatti in the Waldstein Sonata!"
Notes on the 24-bit download: Please see this page for test files and further information regarding this format. Although restoration work is done at a sample rate of 44.1kHz, we have upsampled the final 24-bit master to 48kHz for additional replay compatibility of our FLAC download. Our twenty-four bit FLAC downloads can be replayed in full quality using a standard DVD video player, a DVD writer and an inexpensive piece of PC software - see here for more information about replay from Video DVD discs.
Peter Katin biographical notes from www.peterkatin.com
His early successes seemed centred round the classical composers; he was greatly in demand for Mozart concerto performances in particular and he also developed a rare talent for chamber music. However, a performance of Rachmaninov's D minor Concerto in 1953 changed his image almost overnight, and hailed as a virtuoso of the first order he was constantly in demand for the most taxing of romantic concertos until the late sixties, but by that time he decided that he needed to make a more in-depth study of the composers who had almost escaped him when he was immersed in the big major works. The first composer in this specialised study was Chopin, and since that time he has become regarded as one of the finest interpreters of this composer's music. He was sufficiently encouraged to make similar studies of Schubert, Schumann, Debussy and Liszt, and as a result has given a number of one-composer recitals. His repertoire now is very flexible and he is happy about performing concertos by Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms in one week, while keeping a very wide variety of styles in his recital programmes. His constant encouragement of the preserving of individuality in young artists has been one factor in the conferral during 1994 of an Honorary Doctorate by De Montfort University, and as a teacher, he has had highly successful years at the Royal Academy of Music, The University of Western Ontario, the Royal College of Music and Thames Valley University. He has now almost forty recordings, more than at any other time in his career, which have been received with critical superlatives. These include the complete Chopin Nocturnes and Impromptus, Grieg Lyric Pieces, Chopin Waltzes and Polonaises and the Rachmaninov Preludes. A live performance of a recital including the Liszt Sonata was released to a rave review in Classic CD. His interest in period pianos has resulted in three such recordings, as well as an all-Chopin programme on his own Collard & Collard 1836, and another on a Broadwood grand that was used by Chopin on the occasion of his last visit to London. Peter Katin gave an anniversary recital at Wigmore Hall on 13 December 1998, exactly fifty years from the date of his début, celebrated his seventieth birthday in November 2000, and his seventy-fifth birthday in 2005. His acclaimed recording of the complete Mozart sonatas were reissued by Altara Music in July 2008, a new CD of four Haydn sonatas will be issued later in the year, as will a Chopin recital from Somm Recordings.
Brahms - Piano Concerto No. 1 musical notes from Wikipedia
Johannes Brahms composed his Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, Op. 15 in 1858, giving the first public performance in Hamburg, Germany the following year.
Form The concerto is in the traditional three movements and lasts approximately between 40 and 50 minutes.
Overview
Composition Brahms worked on the composition for some years, as was the case with many of his works. After a prolonged gestation period, it was first performed on January 22, 1859, in Hanover, Germany, when Brahms was just 25 years old. Five days later, at Leipzig, an unenthusiastic audience hissed at the concerto, while critics savaged it, labelling it "perfectly unorthodox, banal and horrid". In a letter to his close personal friend, the renowned violinist Joseph Joachim, Brahms stated, "I am only experimenting and feeling my way", adding sadly, "all the same, the hissing was rather too much!" Brahms originally conceived the work as a sonata for two pianos. Seeking a grander and fuller sound, Brahms later orchestrated the work in an attempt to transform it into a four-movement symphony. This was, if not his first, one of his first attempts at orchestral writing, and he sought much advice from his friend Julius Otto Grimm. However, he also found that unsatisfactory. Brahms ultimately decided that he had not sufficiently mastered the nuances of orchestral color to sustain a symphony, and instead relied on his skills as a pianist and composer for the piano to complete the work as a concerto. Brahms only retained the original material from the work's first movement; the remaining movements were discarded and two new ones were composed, yielding a work in the more usual three-movement concerto structure.
Biographical points Brahms' biographers often note that the first sketches for the dramatic opening movement followed quickly on the heels of the 1854 suicide attempt of the composer's dear friend and mentor, Robert Schumann, an event which caused great anguish for Brahms. He finally completed the concerto two years after Schumann's death in 1856, by which time his love for Schumann's widow, Clara Schumann, had fully blossomed. The degree to which Brahms' personal experience is embedded in the concerto is hard to gauge since several other factors also influenced the musical expression of the piece. The epic mood links the work explicitly to the tradition of the Beethoven symphony that Brahms sought to emulate. The finale of the concerto, for example, is clearly modeled on the last movement of Beethoven's third piano concerto, while the concerto's key of D minor is the same as both Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Mozart's dramatic Piano Concerto No. 20.
Symphonic and chamber techniques The work reflects Brahms' effort to combine the piano with the orchestra as equal partners, unlike earlier classical concertos, where the orchestra effectively accompanied the pianist. Even for the young Brahms, the concerto-as-showpiece had little appeal. Instead, he enlisted both orchestra and soloist in the service of the musical ideas; technically difficult passages in the concerto are never gratuitous, but extend and develop the thematic material. Such an approach is thoroughly in keeping with Brahms' artistic temperament, but also reflects the concerto's symphonic origins and ambitions. His effort drew on both chamber music techniques and the pre-classical Baroque concerto grosso, an approach that later was fully realized in Brahms' Second Piano Concerto. This first concerto also demonstrates Brahms' particular interest in scoring for the timpani and the horn, both of whose parts are notoriously difficult, with the timpani playing repeated notes for extended periods of time and the horn part being difficult for its many prominent usages with or without the piano. Although a work of Brahms' youth, this concerto is a mature work that points forward to his later concertos and his First Symphony. Most notable are its scale and grandeur, as well as the thrilling technical difficulties it presents. As time passed, the work grew in popularity until it was recognized as a masterpiece.
Notes from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piano_Concerto_No._4_(Beethoven)
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Born in London, Peter Katin’s musical talent was evident at the age of four, and he was admitted to the senior department of the Royal Academy of Music when he was twelve, four years before the official age of entry. The success of his Wigmore Hall début in 1948 started him on a career that has taken him throughout the world (he was the first British artist to give a post-war solo tour of the then USSR), and in those earlier years he was greatly influenced by his meetings with Clifford Curzon, Claudio Arrau and Myra Hess, who gave him much advice for which he has always been deeply grateful.
