Brahms, Walzer Op. 39
Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 52a
Neue Liebeslieder Walzer Op. 65a
ICSM 001 (OMNIA)
Fiammetta Tarli & Ivo Varbanov, piano four hands
The first release of ICSM Records (ICSM 001) features the complete recording of Brahms four-hand Waltzes. Dance music was in Johannes Brahms’s blood. Two particular dance-measures fascinated him throughout his life, the waltz and the Hungarian Czárdás.
Here we explore what he could do with waltz-rhythms, even on the smallest scale, in the medium of the piano duet. Brahms’s two sets of Liebeslieder-Walzer (Love-song Waltzes) used to be among his best-known works. These beguiling little waltz-songs remind us of a time before radio or television, when domestic music-making was a fact of life, a time when ‘quartet parties’ were frequent and when families would gather around the piano to play and sing for their evening entertainment.
Performed by Tarli and Varbanov, the two interpreters enrapt the listener with an imaginary fantasy on the waltz form whose underlying theme is love. Here you have an hour of sheer delight. ∗∗∗∗∗
— Klassisk Musikkmagasin (Norway)
A dizzying experience. ∗∗∗∗
— Stephen Pritchard, The Observer (UK)
An absolute delight to hear.
— Jerry Dubins, Fanfare (USA)