Kahchun Wong and Gerhard Oppitz – Brahms and Shostakovich

In typically modest fashion, Brahms described his Piano Concerto No. 2 as “a very small piano concerto with a very small and pretty scherzo.” Right. Meanwhile, with the threat of deadly censure from the Stalinist authorities hanging over his head, Shostakovich outwardly called his Fifth Symphony “a Soviet artist’s reply to just criticism.” The truth of these two masterpieces is monumentally evident otherwise – witness them in the expert hands of critically acclaimed German pianist Gerhard Oppitz and trail-blazing Singaporean conductor Kahchun Wong.