Nicholas Angelich - Brahms: Paganini Variations & other Piano Works (2006)

Who is Nicholas Angelich and why does he play Brahms so well? Indeed, better than "so well," why does Angelich sound like a born Brahms player? Actually a born American trained in Paris who had made several recordings as an accompanist and a couple of discs of Liszt and Rachmaninov as a soloist, Angelich, with his mixture of deft dexterity and enormous intensity, of soulful expressivity and demonic virtuosity, sounds in Brahms like an idealized Wilhelm Kempff with a better technique crossed with an only slightly less terrifying Sviatoslav Richter. Angelich's Ballades are by turns heroic and tragic, lyric and dramatic, triumphant and, in the closing pages of the final Andante con moto, wonderfully consoling. His Rhapsodies are an intoxicating blend of emotional restlessness, interpretative recklessness, and rhythmic force. His Paganini Variations are brightly colored, brilliantly shaped, and fantastically imaginative, qualities only rarely present in Brahms' music, but fully present in these Variations and given a double-helping of power in Angelich's blazing performance. As captured in Virgin's immense but intimate sound, Angelich sounds like he could play any other work by Brahms, indeed, any other work by any composer, and sound like he was born to play it.