The recording includes performances by Polish violinist Maria Nowak, violist Katarzyna Budnik, and Japanese cellist Yuja Okamoto.
In a statement to the Polish News Agency (PAP), Zimerman said: "All Brahms’s chamber music is fantastic – the sonatas, the trios, the Clarinet Quintet. There is no bad piece among them. I particularly love the Third Quartet. It’s crazy. It’s so powerful. It has unbelievable drive."
The Brahms album will be released by Deutsche Grammophon, the prestigious label Zimerman has been recording with since the start of his career in the mid-1970s. The release will be available digitally, on CD, and on vinyl.
According to Deutsche Grammophon’s website, 'Zimerman’s album reflects a love of chamber music that dates back to his childhood. [...] It was Zimerman’s father, a keen amateur pianist, who instilled a love of chamber music in his young son. He would invite friends to the family home in southern Poland to play everything from Strauss waltzes to transcriptions of Mahler symphonies. Krystian began by listening and page-turning but was soon joining in on the piano. ‘It was a fantastic experience to feel this passion for making music together and to be part of it,’ Zimerman recalls."
Next week, Zimerman is scheduled to perform Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Simon Rattle in Paris (January 14) and Luxembourg (January 16).
(mk/ał)