David’s power and individuality make a separation between composer and performer, between creator and re-creator unrealistic. He sees the simple grace and lyricism favoured by many pianists as an evasion of a deeper poetic truth, and if he gives us all of Brahms’s exulting strength in the fugue from the ‘Handel’ Variations, he is no less responsive to darker nights of the soul in the Three Intermezzi. Always there is an open invitation to reappraise Brahms’s genius, not by a radical re-interpretation (the determinedly ‘different’ way of, say, Gould or Pogorelich) but by a probing look beneath the music’s surface life. David may be true to the composer, but he is a pianist to make you think again.

Praise

‘These were insightful readings, richly successive whilst still placing primacy on the musical line rather than surface beauty’ — International Record Review

Track Listing

Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79
No 1 in B minor
No 2 in G minor

Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 21 No. 1
Thema
Variation 1
Variation 2
Variation 3
Variation 4
Variation 5
Variation 6
Variation 7
Variation 8
Variation 9
Variation 10
Variation 11

Three Intermezzi, Op. 117
No 1 in E flat major
No 2 in B flat minor
No 3 in C sharp minor

Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel, Op. 24
Variation 1
Variation 2
Variation 3
Variation 4
Variation 5
Variation 6
Variation 7
Variation 8
Variation 9
Variation 10
Variation 11
Variation 12
Variation 13
Variation 14
Variation 15
Variation 16
Variation 17
Variation 18
Variation 19
Variation 20
Variation 21
Variation 22
Variation 23
Variation 24
Variation 25
Fuga