Indeed, in the turbulent first movement it is Luosha Fang’s deliciously sinewy viola playing that lends a distinctive edge to the middle textures, while Peter Jarůšek’s thrumming cello pizzicato also cuts through to enlivening effect. On this new account, however, Giltburg’s Fazioli instrument – not too closely miked – achieves a subtle blend with the strings, so that there’s a markedly less concertante, more collegial feel than on many rival accounts. In its final version the Piano Quintet, in the stormy Beethovenian key of F minor (surely a nod to the ‘Appassionata’ Sonata), can sometimes feel like a would-be piano concerto, with the piano often dominating proceedings. … But please, dear Johannes, do agree just this time, and rework the piece once more.’ Brahms duly obliged by recasting the work as the Piano Quintet we know today, giving us the best of both worlds, the luminous colours of the strings with the rhythmic incisiveness of the piano, while this time preserving the two-piano sonata version for separate publication. He then reworked it as a sonata for two pianos, but Clara Schumann (who had been so taken with the string quintet version), tried it out together with the conductor Hermann Levi and found it wanting: ‘Many of the most beautiful ideas are lost on the piano, recognisable only to the performer, and not enjoyable for the audience. But Brahms’s friend, the violinist Joseph Joachim, felt that the sound needed more rhythmic definition than an ensemble of strings could provide, and Brahms appears to have destroyed this first strings-only version of the work. The Piano Quintet itself started life as a string quintet, in the Schubertian line-up of two violins, viola and two cellos. Recorded in Prague’s Domovina Studio in November 2021, these are well-balanced recordings, finely focused yet with an ideal sense of warmth to the sound. Yet the Pavel Haas Quartet once again bring their superior technical capabilities and musical insight to bear on familiar music in enlivening and enriching ways. Both the middle-period Piano Quintet in F minor, op.34 (1864), and the later String Quintet no.2 in G major, op.111 (1890), represent Brahms the chamber composer at the peak of his game, and both works are well-represented on disc. Pavel Haas Quartet, Boris Giltburg (piano), Pavel Nikl (viola)įour-and-a-half years after their award-winning account of quintets by Antonín Dvořák, the Pavel Haas Quartet together with pianist Boris Giltburg and founder quartet member Pavel Nikl return in two great chamber works by Dvořák’s mentor, Johannes Brahms.
Brahms - Piano Quintet, String Quintet no.2