Brahms: Works for Solo Piano Vol 2 – review

Much of Brahms's piano music, with its galloping rhythms and urgent melodic figures, can be called "demonic", the word his friend Schumann used to describe the younger composer's Ballade in B minor Op 10 No 3. It starts in satanic vein but opens into tender lyricism, another Brahms trait. In Volume 2 of the piano music, Barry Douglas is particularly successful with this B minor Ballade, and in the Sonata No 3 Op 5 written around the same time. There's a tendency towards heaviness in the Ballade Op 10 No 2, but the Intermezzi (Op 116 Nos 2 and 6, Op 117 no 2) and the Rhapsody Op 119 no 4 are handled with skill, perception and dignity.