Throughout her impressive international career, the pianist Orli Shaham has displayed her unwavering passion and exceptional understanding of the music of Johannes Brahms. Admired for her interpretations of both standard and contemporary repertoire, she places Brahms’ late works for solo piano – his most intense and beautiful music – as the keystone of a collection of music history’s most amazing compositions.

Orli Shaham surrounds these masterworks with compositions that specifically inspired the romantic master: works by J S Bach, Chopin and Schumann. Her commitment to living composers led her to commission Avner Dorman and Bruce Adolphe to compose works purposefully influenced by Brahms. As luck would have it, Australian composer Brett Dean’s recent Hommage à Brahms für Klavier, fits neatly into this collection.

This is Orli Shaham’s second commission from the young Israeli-American composer Avner Dorman; the first was in 2010 for the Hebrew Melodies collection she recorded with her brother, the violinist Gil Shaham. She gushes about Dorman’s After Brahms, describing it as “ingenious, sensuous, and powerful.”

Orli’s love, affection and understanding of Brahms pervades this recording in abundance. The recording opens with Brahms Op.118, the A minor Intermezzo full of bravura and confidence the torrent of arpeggios getting the recording off to a flying start. The Chopin, Schumann and Schubert offered here from Orli displays, what is an enviable technique, to perfection – the delicacy of touch is clearly evident, along with her ability to carry and sustain melodic line and shape, a technical facility many pianists can but dream of, her powerful gift of intimacy ever drawing the listener in.

‘In this collection, I have put together some music which inspired Brahms, as well as some directly and indirectly inspired by him, alongside his majestic final oeuvre.’ Orli Shaham