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62 BRAHMS_COMPLETE SOLO PIANOWORKS
The presence of Brahms at keymoments in the young artist’s itinerary seems
to mark out the construction of his identity. Things slowly crystallised into a
project to record the complete pianoworks; Geoffroy Couteau did not at first
perceive the wildly athletic nature of the idea, but he felt its rightness in his
innermost self. Having already frequented a substantial portion of Brahms’s
output for piano, he had the presentiment that here was a quest he must
accomplish in its entirety. He then decided to devote himself exclusively to
the project: to deepen this relationship would be in the nature of an odyssey.
‘You never feel so powerfully yourself as
when you lose yourself – perhaps you
become yourself thanks to the other, in this
case thanks to what he wrote’