“For me f.a.e. [frei, aber einsam – free but lonely] has remained a symbol, and it is in my gift, despite all, to invoke it.” – Johannes Brahms to Joseph Joachim, 5 March 1888

Johannes Brahms sought solitude, in order to find freedom in music and in composition. In his new album “Frei aber einsam” pianist Matthias Kirschnereit brings Brahms’s timeless music into the present day. In the two “monoliths” – the F minor Sonata and the F minor Quintet – this motto takes musical form. The Scherzo from the eponymous Sonata for piano and violin was Brahms’s first musical involvement with this subject. “He made it clear to his friends time and again that he wished to live wholly for music, wholly for his compositions,” the pianist says. What can we learn from his works? “Perhaps that we need to focus, take time out and ask ourselves where we want to go. And we can best do that in a state of solitude in the most positive sense of the word.”

Matthias Kirschnereit is currently one of the most exciting and successful German pianists of his generation. He has made his name at Berlin Classics and here presents his new album. Romantic to the depths of its musical being, this recording wonderfully brings alive the (musical) motto that governed the life of Johannes Brahms. Added interest is won from the chamber-music coupling and his collaboration with the Amaryllis Quartett and violinist Lena Neudauer.