The Works

Welcome to The Works, our weekly playlist showcasing the latest and best classical albums, performed by some of the world’s finest artists and ensembles. Francesco Piemontesi heads up this playlist with his ravishingly poised performance of the first of three short piano works that Johannes Brahms composed late in his life, around 1892. The Op. 117 Intermezzi, at times impossibly tender and melancholy, show the German Romantic composer at his most emotionally vulnerable. “They are like intimate diary entries,” Piemontesi tells Apple Music Classical, “worlds of resignation and inwardness.” The music’s rocking rhythm suggests a lullaby with its inner voices constantly shifting, creating subtle tensions and releases. “Underneath the calm surface there is a great depth of contrapuntal thought,” says Piemontesi, “and that is what gives the piece its inexhaustible richness.” The piece’s outward simplicity showcases, he adds, is one of Brahms’ great paradoxes—“the music feels simple and inevitable, but it is built with great sophistication.” Piemontesi’s advice to listeners is to sink into the music’s serene atmosphere, “and hear the way the inner voices and harmonies move and change the colour of the melody. One of the challenges for me is to keep that lullaby-like flow unbroken, while at the same time letting these harmonic inflections emerge with clarity. But the greatest challenge is to preserve the fragility of the piece.” Don’t forget that we regularly update The Works, so if you find a piece of music or a performance you particularly love, be sure to add it to your library.