Francesco Piemontesi joins the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig and Manfred Honeck for a live recording of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto — a work born from personal catastrophe, conceived in the aftermath of Robert Schumann’s suicide attempt and reworked over years from sonata to symphony to concerto. Honeck brings elegance and symphonic breadth to its “Genesis”-like opening, while Piemontesi treats the piano not as virtuosic display but as a searching, thinking voice within the orchestra’s vast sonic world. The recording pairs the concerto with the Six Piano Pieces, Op. 118 — composed thirty-four years later as a work of farewell, ranging from consoling intermezzi to the desolate, Dies-irae-haunted final piece Brahms’ friend Hanslick called “a breviary of pessimism.”

Francesco Piemontesi – piano
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Manfred Honeck