Garrick Ohlsson’s final foray into the solo piano works of Brahms ranges from the first to the last published piece of that superlative oeuvre.
Opuses 4, 9, and 1 demonstrate Brahms’s debt to Beethoven, Chopin, and the Schumanns. Following the ode to Vienna that are the Sixteen Waltzes, Mr. Ohlsson closes this remarkable survey with the Four Pieces of Op. 119, the first of which was described by Clara Schumann as a “grey pearl.” The closing bars of Op. 119, No. 4 return to the key of E-flat minor, where Brahms began his solo piano journey with his first chronological entry into the genre, the Scherzo, Op. 4.