Brahms - Piano Pieces

The Guardian 60

Arcadi Volodos
(Sony Classical)

For all the flawless magnificence of his keyboard technique, the sharply contrasted aspects of Arcadi Volodos’s playing are sometimes hard to reconcile. There is the insistent, brittle way in which he sees off bravura pieces, as though the sheer accomplishment of meeting their challenges so effortlessly were an end in itself, and communicating with the audience were very much a secondary consideration. On the other hand, he is capable of playing of the most exquisite simplicity, spinning lines of lyrical purity.

There’s much more scope for the latter than for the former in this collection of mostly late Brahms. The playing is gently contoured and subtly shaded, though you can sense that Volodos launches into the Op 76 set – two minor-key capriccios followed by a pair of major-key intermezzos – more comfortably than he does most of the Op 117 and 118 collections, in which he seems to be very consciously on his best behaviour. The lullaby that begins Op 117 doesn’t really unfold as naturally as it does from some pianists, while the pathos of the final piece of Op 118, with its lonely, unadorned melodic line, is kept very much at arm’s length.