Stephen Hough essentially competes with himself in his new recordings of both Brahms piano concertos. On the plus side, Hyperion’s sonics capture a wider dynamic range and closer perspective in comparison with the pianist’s late-1990s Virgin Classics versions. The interpretations also have evolved, if not consistently for the better.
For example, the D minor concerto’s outer movements often lack the earlier versions’ fire and textural transparency. Notice Hough’s slightly heavier touch in the first-movement development and his more exaggerated detached articulation in the Rondo’s main theme; or notice conductor Mark Wigglesworth’s relatively listless treatment of the same movement’s fugato alongside Andrew Davis’ altogether lighter, more differentiated reading, and you’ll hear what I mean.
In the Adagio, however, Hough generates more polyphonic tension between the hands, favoring less uniformly suave and tapered phrasing this time around. Furthermore, Hyperion’s wider dynamic range and close-up detail sometimes works to the orchestra’s advantage, allowing ordinarily hard-to-record passages to emerge with uncommon clarity, such as the marcato motive that passes between the two horns, the violas, the second violins, and first violins in the D minor concerto’s first movement (measure 192).
Hough still employs liberal accelerandos and ritardandos throughout the B-flat concerto, albeit now with more expressive economy and cohesion. The slow movement’s minor-key climax and the Scherzo’s coda take on a forward moving urgency absent from the earlier recording, although the Mozarteum orchestra’s minimum string vibrato policy yields threadbare, lackluster results when sustained strength is required. Listen to the first appearance of the Scherzo’s unison A minor theme, which sounds so reticent in relation to the BBC Symphony’s vibrant string section. Nor do the horn and string exchanges just before the Allegretto grazioso’s coda match the Dallas Symphony’s timbral profile under Andrew Litton, with soloist Marc-André Hamelin, also on Hyperion. In sum, I prefer Hough’s earlier Brahms D minor, his newer B-flat major, and our reference versions’ more equitable soloist/conductor/orchestra collaborations.
