The Hungarian Dances of Johannes Brahms have always been most popular. Rarely, however, have these immortal evergreens been heard so glowing and full of life as in the performance of Guido Schiefen and Markus Kreul, who for the first time ever recorded the complete arrangement for cello and piano by the Italian cello virtuoso Alfredo Piatti on Super Audio CD.

Along with Joseph Joachim, Piatti was one of Clara Schumann’s preferred chamber music partners and thus in Johannes Brahms’s closest circle.

The composer must have been very satisfied with Piatti’s version, since the cello adds several dimensions of the most sensitive expression to the score, which was originally written for piano four hands – only a string instrument can lament as painfully as the sixths in No.11. Schiefen and Kreul joyfully celebrate the emotionally charged music, without ever slipping into cliché.

Piatti’s arrangement is much more than just virtuoso stuff: in close relation to the four-handed model, a genuine piece of chamber music is created, heard here in MDG’s pioneering surround sound SACD.