In his last three sets of piano pieces, all unnecessary rhetoric is purged from Brahms's music. There is no hectoring or lecturing, no celebration of virtuosity for its own sake. Lars Vogt is the ...

It was Clara Schumann who characterised the first of the Op 119 Piano Pieces as "grey, pearl-veiled and very precious", which could stand as a description of so much of Brahms' late piano music. But ...

For a while now, Rachmaninov has usurped Brahms in the affection of pianists, at least insofar as the two composers’ solo piano works feature in concert programmes. And, perhaps as a consequence, the ...