Having been disappointed with some of his recent Liszt release, not least an uneven B-minor Sonata, especially his aggressive fortissimos, I am pleased to report that Benjamin Grosvenor’s eighty-six-minute Schumann (Robert & Clara) and Brahms recital is far more successful, although the gabbled opening to Kreisleriana (the big work here) doesn’t inspire much confidence; yet, following such a beginning there is much that is poetic and internally impassioned (whereas the Liszt had come across as rhetorically forced), and the other pieces by Robert, all short (even if one, Clara-related, is extracted from the F-minor Sonata, Opus 14), are beautifully turned and sensitive. Clara returns the compliment to her husband in a fine set of Variations, and the conclusion is Brahms’s three Intermezzos, Opus 117, the first of them especially soulful and confiding. The recorded sound (Arne Akselberg, April 2022, Potton Hall) is excellent. Decca 485 3945.
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