Superb and sublime: music. Superb and sublime: performances. What a good idea: record three of Handel’s Keyboard Suites (including the ‘Harmonious Blacksmith’ movement) and complement them with Brahms’s Handel Variations and Fugue (Opus 24). Seong-Jin Cho is simply marvellous in the Handel, revealing these particular choices to be the equal of J. S. Bach’s harpsichord music – just letting loose a cat into a pack of pigeons with that statement – making them germane to the piano with playing of wonderful shape and scintillation, remarkable clarity as well, and the Brahms is no-less-fine; sure, one can quibble something small – maybe an accent or an elongation, even a tempo, and it’s not the wittiest account – but there is nothing marmoreal here, Brahms is shorn of beard and sandals (and anyway this is music by a young man), Cho finding a range of touch (delicate to powerful) and dynamics that summons the music’s potential, which through to the Fugue, itself pealing to victory, adds up to an account of fresh discovery and joie de vivre. With excellent sound and a couple of tasty extra pieces (neither being Handel’s seminal theme) to encore the Brahms, this notable release can be found on DG 486 3018.
Seong-Jin Cho records Handel & Brahms – “The Handel Project” – for Deutsche Grammophon.
