Markus Groh - Brahms: The Late Piano Pieces (2008)

It's not just the virtuosity of these performances that amazes. It's the maturity. Though he won the Artur Schnabel competition in 1990 and the Queen Elisabeth competition in 1995, Groh has made only two recordings thus far, an all-Liszt recital in 2006 and this 2008 all-Brahms recital, both on Avie. The Liszt disc was a dazzling work of incendiary brilliance, but this Brahms disc is even better: a probing work of ripe genius. With measured tempos, radiant textures, burnished colors, and rubato phrasing, Groh digs deep beneath the notes of Brahms' final works for the piano, the 19 works published as Opus 1116, 117, 118, and 119. Groh comprehends the music's aching lyrical melodies, chromatically inflected harmonies, and dusky autumnal tone from the inside out, and his performances here rival those of Backhaus and Kempff in insight and understanding. Captured in wonderfully present super audio digital sound by Avie's engineers, this disc deserves to be heard by as wide an audience as possible.