Much of Brahms's piano music, with its galloping rhythms and urgent melodic figures, can be called "demonic", the word his friend Schumann used to describe the younger composer's Ballade in B minor Op 10 No 3. It starts in satanic vein but opens into tender lyricism, another Brahms trait. In Volume 2 of the piano music, Barry Douglas is particularly successful with this B minor Ballade, and in the Sonata No 3 Op 5 written around the same time. There's a tendency towards heaviness in the Ballade Op 10 No 2, but the Intermezzi (Op 116 Nos 2 and 6, Op 117 no 2) and the Rhapsody Op 119 no 4 are handled with skill, perception and dignity.