by Ben Hogwood

Earlier this week the very sad death of Nicholas Angelich was announced, at the age of just 51. Thankfully the highly-regarded pianist made a good deal of recordings for Virgin Classics and later Warner, many of which included the music of Beethoven and Brahms, at whom he excelled.

This playlist includes the late set of Fantasias published by Brahms as Op.116, then a sparkling clip from Prokofiev’s arrangement of music from his ballet Romeo and Juliet. I was lucky to see Angelich perform Brahms’s Piano Quartet no.1 in G minor at the Wigmore Hall with violinist Renaud Capuçon, viola player Antoine Tamestit and cellist Gautier Capuçon, around the time of their excellent recording for Virgin Classics. You can hear that as part of the playlist, which ends with Angelich in Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto, a lean account with the Insula Orchestra and Laurence Equilbey: