IDAGIO | Schumann: Piano Quartet, Op. 47 - Brahms: Piano Quintet, Op. 34 7318599922584

Featuring

Hrachya Avanesyan
Diemut Poppen
Alexander Chaushian
Yevgeny Sudbin
Boris Brovtsyn
Robert Schumann

Johannes Brahms

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Recording & Production

This recording was made in May 2016 at The Shoe Factory in Nicosia, Cyprus, in connection with the 16th International Pharos Chamber Music Festival.

Composition History

Johannes Brahms's Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, completed in 1864, had a complex origin, starting as a string quintet, then reworked as a sonata for two pianos, before becoming the piano quintet.

Composer Biography

Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet is dedicated to Count Mathieu Wielhorsky, an amateur cellist and director of the St Petersburg Symphonic Society, whom the Schumanns met during Clara's Russian tour.

Compositional Technique

Unlike Schumann's Piano Quintet, which features a concertante dialogue between piano and string quartet, his Piano Quartet favors equality among its four parts, with the cello often acting as a 'first among equals'.

Notable Performances

The first public performance of Schumann's Piano Quartet took place on December 8, 1844, at the Leipzig Gewandhaus, featuring Clara Schumann on piano.

Critical Reception

Clara Schumann, the composer's wife and a renowned pianist, believed that the musical ideas in Brahms's Piano Quintet were so rich they 'ought to be spread across an entire orchestra'.

Composition History

Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op. 47, was composed in 1842, immediately after his Piano Quintet, Op. 44, and is part of his 'chamber music year'.