Ferruccio Busoni counted Johannes Brahms – alongside Alkan, Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann – among the five greatest composers of piano music after Beethoven. This assessment still holds true today: Brahms’s piano works remain an essential part of the core repertoire for all pianists of stature.

With her new Brahms anthology, Jimin Oh-Havenith continues the path set by her acclaimed recordings of the piano music of Robert Schumann – Brahms’s mentor and devoted admirer. This album focuses on variations and character pieces, two genres to which Brahms turned with increasing intensity after composing his three early piano sonatas. In works such as the Handel Variations, the Ballades and Rhapsodies, as well as the late Intermezzi, Brahms created milestones of 19th-century piano literature. These compositions are distinguished by their unique handling of piano sound and technique, their compositional innovation, and their expressive depth. That Brahms was also one of the great “composer-pianists” of the 19th century is impressively demonstrated in his highly virtuosic transcription for the left hand of Johann Sebastian Bach’s famous Chaconne from the Partita for solo violin in D minor.