Brahms: Complete Variations for Solo Piano

Garrick Ohlsson (piano) Hyperion CDA 67777 (2 CDs) ***

Brahms's variations for piano were written in the earlier part of his career – he was around 30 when he composed the last of them, the outrageously difficult Paganini Variations. Garrick Ohlsson has the technical resources to tackle the particular challenges that Brahms attached to Paganini's famous theme. That's exactly what he does, sometimes more than a shade too literally, sometimes even approaching the effects of target practice. He's a shade too literal, as well, in the D minor Variations the composer arranged from his Op 18 String Sextet. Ohlsson's approach to the Handel Variations, and the two earlier sets that were published as Brahms's Op 21, while still powerfully athletic, is more sensitive. He's at his best in the rarely heard Variations on a theme of Schumann, written as a homage to the older composer (then newly confined to an asylum) when Brahms was 21.

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