Klavierstucke 76

Peter Orth writes: "While it may seem that everything has been recorded in the classical canon, I've found there still is room for new interpretations. Oddly, the piano music of Johannes Brahms has by no means been exhausted. In my experience with American music teaching, the great masters were very much handled with a certain distant reverence - when in actuality they need to be approached naturally. Coming to live in Germany where the composers lived and worked removes these pedestals in favor of understanding their lives in the context of their surroundings. Having been in the same room to hear the likes of Callas, Baker, Bernstein, Celibidache, Horowitz, Rubinstein, Serkin, to mention only a few, showed me viscerally what kind of fire is involved in making a musical statement. Perhaps having been witness to a time now gone, arguably the last of the great performing generation, has informed in my ethos a kind of measuring stick against which to measure myself and be responsible to. Whether I can live up to any of it is not for me to say."