“Revelatory Brahms from another age.”
We are happy to share with you that our recording of Brahms – Ballades Op. 10 / Variations & Fugue on a theme by Handelperformed by Nelly Akopian-Tamarina is BBC Music Magazine’s Instrumental Choice for February 2018! Read a passage of the review below.
This recording of her Brahms was made at Snape Maltings in 1995, but is only now released for the first time. And it’s a revelation: I’ve never heard Brahms’s Handel Variations played like this. The music seems to come from a distant place and time, but it draws us in with the most heart-warming immediacy. It’s partly the singing line and the pearlised glow she puts on the notes, and partly the fact that she lets each variation unfold in a natural and unhurried way, as though she and we have all the time in the world. When the score calls for lyricism she finds a caressing tone, and when it demands assertiveness she’s absolutely there, but the drama is restrained until the towering fugue at the close.
Michael Church
Read the full review on BBC Music Magazine – February 2018 issue
