Album Notes

The piano quartet in g minor was completed in
the middle of the 1850’s but was not published
until 1863. It was premiered in Hungary with
the Grün Quartet in 1867 featuring Brahms at
the piano. It must have been much more
accessible to the audience than was the c
minor quartet, opus 60, premiered in Budapest
twelve years later, once again with Brahms at
the piano but this time with members of the
Krancsevics Quartet. The work is overshadowed
by dark clouds as the result of a painful
period in Brahms life. Brahms is reputed to
have harbored thoughts of suicide. The hopeless
love affair with Clara Schumann plays an
inspirational but also destructive role in this
work filled with the opposing forces of creative
energy and desperation. In this aura of chamber
musical pro and con one can see and hear
the unlikely opposition of the disagreeable
sounding quite agreeable in a work that was
made available for publication some 20 years
after its inception. Regarding the specific
history of the work it is worth citing the Hungarian
musicologist István Barna: "In 1856
Brahms showed the work to his friend Joachim
in its original form, i.e. without the scherzo and
in the key of c sharp minor. After hearing the
work Joachim agreed with Brahms that the
piece still needed to mature. At the same time,
however, Clara Schumann entered in her diary
that she liked the adagio movement. Brahms
repeatedly altered the work in fundamental
ways. He changed the key, inserted a scherzo
between the first two movements and wrote a
completely new finale.”