Brahms: String Quintets – In the Composer’s Four-Hand Piano Version

Description

It is admittedly a platitude to state that Johannes Brahms’ chamber music is among the finest ever written. Yet, if this is not stated, the level at which this Da Vinci Classics album is played may not be appreciated in fullness. We have here two original transcriptions, realized by the composer himself, after the two exceedingly beautiful String Quintets by Johannes Brahms. Eight years divide the two works, and those eight years are particularly important in supporting Brahms’ transition from his fully mature to his late style. On the one hand, therefore, this pair of Quintets represents yet another instance of Brahms’ typical habit of conceiving works in the same genre by pairs (which was, for him, a way of organising his musical thought and of exploring constantly new perspectives). On the other hand, the temporal (and partly stylistic) gap dividing the two works gives us pause in simply assimilating them to each other.
It may seem curious that Brahms, that giant of chamber music, only approached the string quintet relatively late in his career. Indeed, he had already tried his hand at this form, but the result had been both satisfactory and unsatisfactory. Satisfactory, because the piece had enthused many of its early listeners; unsatisfactory, because several of them (and ultimately Brahms himself) had agreed that the musical ideas and their organization were perfect, but perhaps not so was the instrumentation. Therefore, he first transcribed it for two pianos, and later for piano and strings (and in this form it did achieve immortal, and well-deserved, fame).
After that comparative trauma, Brahms let some time elapse before returning to string quintets; and, in the meantime, he worked strenuously on other string ensembles, such as the string sexted beyond, obviously, the quartet.
It may seem, therefore, slightly puzzling to hear these two absolute masterpieces of the string repertoire played on a piano. Incidentally, being a pianist myself, I recall when I was practising Brahms’ own transcription after Bach’s Chaconne, for the left hand alone, and my brother, a violinist, who was passing by, shouted: “My kingdom for a bow!”. Indeed, the piano, in comparison with string instruments, has two dramatic shortcomings. The first is, in fact, the lack of “a bow”, i.e. of the possibility of sustaining the sound throughout its duration, to change its intensity, expressivity, dynamics. When a piano key is pressed, not much can be done on the sound it has produced. The second is related, and has to do with the string musician’s left-hand technique, including, first and foremost, vibrato. A knowledgeable use of vibrato allows the performer to change profoundly the “sound of sound”, in a manner of speaking: the tone, the colour, the timbre, and, consequently, the overall “mood”.
Why, then, should one sacrifice the string quintet’s sound in favour of a piano version? There are good reasons for this, in fact. The first and most important reason is that Brahms himself realized these piano transcriptions. They are not only approved but actively willed and purposefully created by the artist who created the original work. Therefore, it seems evident that Brahms believed that the keyboard version was not inferior to the original, or, at least, that it could stand comparison.
The second is that, by reducing the number of players from five to two, the work could be performed more frequently, and therefore gain more widespread dissemination. Of course, the resulting piano pieces are not easy at all, but at least on the practical plane it was much easier to find a possibility for a piano duet to perform than for a string quintet. In fact, string quintets have normally to be gathered for a specific purpose, for a particular work or event: while string quartets have a life of their own, it is very uncommon to encounter a “stable” string quintet. (This also depends on the fact that there are at least two main types of string quintets, i.e. the one with two violas and that with two cellos).
But the different number of performers does not only impact on the practical and, in a manner of speaking, “promotional” aspect of performance. It has also a bearing on the style of performance. Even though there are, of course, excellent quintets which frequently perform together and have, therefore, developed a noteworthy habit to play together, the piano duet may offer, on average, greater flexibility and cohesion. This is due, first, and once more, to the higher probability for the members of a piano duet to have a habit to play together. And secondly, to the objective closeness that the piano duet affords (and requires). Whilst at times the extreme proximity of two pianists playing together on the same keyboard may seem (and is) taxing and uncomfortable, the plus side is that the two can really breathe together, perform the same movements, be on the same line in all details of performance.
This flexibility, this oneness, is a particularly welcome and needed aspect in the performance of such masterpieces by Brahms, since all is played on the finest nuances, on the slightest elements, on the unnoticeable details.
And a last element which does not apply to all performances of these works on the piano, but which does apply to the present recording, regards the instrument in use. Here, the two pianists chose a unique instrument, about which they wrote what follows:
“There I always know exactly what I am writing and why I write in one way or another,” wrote Brahms to Clara Schumann, referring to the Streicher piano. From 1872 onwards, in his Viennese apartment at Karlsgasse 4, he had at his permanent disposal a grand piano offered to him by Emil Streicher: on that instrument he studied, composed, and organized small private performances for his musician friends. Later, in 1889, he again chose a piano from the same maker for his only phonographic recording. For Brahms, therefore, the Streicher represented a tonal and technical model perfectly attuned to his sensitivity and musical language.
The sound of these instruments, characteristic of the Viennese action, is at once transparent, full-bodied, and rich in nuance. The clear timbral differentiation among the registers allows for a natural rendering of the polyphonic details, harmonic depth, and melodic interplay typical of Brahms’s music. The use of a Streicher thus appears as a perfectly coherent choice for recreating the sonic and timbral context in which the transcriptions of the String Quintets first took shape.
With this recording, we wished to contribute to the rediscovery of rarely performed works which, in our view, not only stand comparison with the original chamber versions but deserve to be counted among Brahms’s masterpieces for piano four hands.
The performance was carried out with the utmost respect for Brahms’s text. Only in the first movement of Op. 111 were two minimal changes introduced: the reinstatement, in the recapitulation, of a missing measure (present in the original version), and the transformation of certain repeated-note passages into broken octaves, more effective on the piano.
Special thanks are due to Marco Barletta for having so generously made available his studio, the magnificent 1860 Streicher, and his invaluable technical and artistic expertise.
We have therefore the unique opportunity of enjoying the velvety, powerful, and expressive sound of this Streicher piano under the fingers of the Righini-Zadra piano duo. And this, far from impoverishing the original texture, actually helps us to discover and savour the masterpieces we learned to love in a refreshing, novel style.
The first of these two transcribed Quintets was written in “spring 1882” by Brahms. The quotation marks are essential, since, untypically for him, Brahms wrote this temporal reference under all movements of the manuscript. This was meant, on the one hand, to point out the (also untypical) quick composition of this work: Brahms was exceedingly precise and exacting, and it was very rare for him to be satisfied with a work written without many afterthoughts. On the other hand, it is really a work bespeaking the gayest season of the year. Here again this is far from typical for Brahms: another platitude (but also a truism) is that Brahms’ mood is, in most cases, “autumnal”. And in fact Hugo Wolf, commenting on this Quintet, remarked that Brahms’ usual “fogs” were nowhere to be seen here.
Brahms was so happy with the composition of this piece that he wrote to his publisher claiming that the enclosed score was probably the best he had sent him, and (speaking modestly…) the best the publisher had printed in ten years! But also Brahms’ longtime friends and frank critics Clara Schumann and Joseph Joachim were highly impressed with the work. Joachim had at first some reservations on the third movement: here again we have something untypical, since most of Brahms’ chamber music works are set in four movements, whilst here the work is in three movements, with the middle one functioning as a combination of slow movement and scherzo (the same will be found in Violin Sonata op. 100).
Like its older sibling, also op. 111 was written in Ischl; some of its material came from the sketches for a fifth Symphony which, alas, never saw the light. As Brahms has just gotten back from Italy, it has been observed that possibly something from Italy can be found in his setting. Here too Brahms was very happy with the result, but, sending the score to Joachim, he observed: “And now I truly hope that you will like the work at least a little—but do not hesitate to tell me otherwise. In that case, I shall console myself with the first [of the Quintets], and, for both, with those of Mozart!”.
Indeed, Brahms here becomes the true Romantic heir to Mozart’s artistry, renewing and refreshing the language necessary for this genre, but also bringing it to a perfection which comes from the full maturity of language, time, and artistry.
Chiara Bertoglio © 2026

Within the sound-world of Johannes Brahms, transcription is not a secondary pursuit, but an intellectual and practical discipline, a mode of knowing. In late nineteenth-century Vienna, music circulated through reading, rehearsal, and cultivated domestic sociability. Piano four hands, capable of concentrating an entire architectural conception within two bodies, proved indispensable to that economy of circulation. Brahms also used it as a testing ground. In November 1883, at the Ehrbar Salon, together with Ignaz Brüll, he presented to a circle of friends the arrangement for two pianos of the Third Symphony only a few days before the première under Hans Richter. The gesture suggests an aesthetic principle. Public performance could be preceded by exacting, controlled listening, in which the work, divested of orchestral colour, lays bare its structural frame and remains open to correction, refinement, and rethinking.
The four-hand versions of the two String Quintets recorded here belong to this same practice: the Quintet in F major op. 88 and the Quintet in G major op. 111. These are authorial transcriptions, conceived close to the genesis of the works and issued by N. Simrock. The arrangement becomes a second medium, destined for the cultivated salon and the private study, and often capable of bringing into sharper relief inner parts, progressions, and points of articulation that can remain half veiled within the timbral aura of the strings. It is no coincidence that the transcriptions accompany the earliest circulation of the quintets, appearing in print alongside the originals.
The String Quintet in F major op. 88 took shape in Bad Ischl. In the manuscript Brahms notes its Ischl provenance and, in correspondence, calls the work a Frühlingsprodukt, a product of spring. The designation is one of atmosphere more than of manner, and it proved suggestive enough for a seasonal sobriquet to attach itself to the piece. The genesis proceeds according to a characteristic practice of verification. From Ischl Brahms arranges a first semi-official performance at Altaussee, at Villa Wagner, pairing the quintet with the Piano Trio in C major op. 87. Thereafter, following a journey in Italy with Theodor Billroth, he returns to Vienna for a trial run at the Billroth household with an expanded quartet. Billroth reports to Clara Schumann that the new works delighted the performers and were repeated twice. The first public performance of the quintet took place not in Vienna but in Frankfurt at the end of 1882, and Clara, then resident in the city, recorded the enthusiastic reception. Brahms paid her a surprise visit, attended rehearsal and première, and the surviving documentation suggests that, in private, the composer and Clara played the new four-hand transcription together, as though the keyboard were a natural threshold through which the music entered the domestic sphere and, with it, the workings of memory.
In the first movement, Allegro non troppo ma con brio, sonata form becomes an elastic field. Transitions cease to be mere conduits and instead assume the dignity of invention. The cantabile profile of the principal theme, seemingly immediate, is sustained by a dense web of inner voices, a network the transcription can render with particular clarity. The composite central movement, Grave ed appassionato, Allegro vivace, Tempo primo, Presto, Tempo primo, compresses the functions of slow movement and scherzo, alternating slow and fast blocks with an almost dramaturgical logic. Here Brahms folds older materials into the mature fabric, sketches for keyboard suites in a Baroque vein never published, so that ancient dance becomes operative memory within modern construction. The Finale, Allegro energico, Presto, continues the historicising impulse. After peremptory chords, the discourse assumes a fugal manner and concludes with a coda intensified in 9/8, as though counterpoint and propulsion were to be reconciled in a final surge.
The quintet circulated within the Herzogenberg circle, privileged interlocutors for Brahms. Some scholars have suggested that the finale of op. 88 echoes thematic material from Heinrich von Herzogenberg’s String Trio op. 27 no. 2, a circumstance that fuelled misunderstandings even in the face of Brahms’s denials. Whether this concerns deliberate allusion or an osmosis born of aesthetic intimacy, the episode illuminates an essential trait of the composer. For Brahms, tradition is not merely a repository of models, but a living dialogue with both the past and the present, at times precariously poised.
Eight years later, once again in Bad Ischl, the String Quintet in G major op. 111 came into being, its span of breath unmistakably broader. A minute trace fixes the inception. In a letter to Eusebius Mandyczewski written in early July 1890, Brahms jots the opening motive on the edge of the envelope, as though entrusting the embryo of the work before the page has assumed its final form. He sends the manuscript to Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, whose judgement he prized, and arranges rehearsals and a first semi-public performance prior to the Viennese debut later that year. Publication follows after further performances in other cities. In correspondence with Joseph Joachim, Brahms measures the new work against an explicitly chosen genealogy, with Mozart’s quintets invoked as the yardstick of the genre.
An image has established itself as a sobriquet, the Prater. After a rehearsal, someone proposed reading the quintet as Brahms at the Prater, and the composer received the idea with amused complicity, evoking the crowd and the park’s vitality. Testimonies associated with Brahmsian tradition recall the regularity of his walks in the Prater and a preference for the popular precinct of the Wurstl Prater, also for the pleasure of observing a city stripped of ceremony, composed of minute gestures and the movements of children.
In the first movement, Allegro non troppo, ma con brio, the impetus is almost symphonic. The opening itself became a subject of rehearsal discussion. Brahms sought a full-bodied sonority, yet such plenitude could obscure the cello line, and before publication he asked Joachim for a judgement on different solutions for the attack. At precisely this point the four-hand transcription is particularly revealing. Tremolo is translated into a pianistic gesture, density becomes immediately measurable, and the balance between thematic emergence and teeming accompaniment discloses itself as a governing concern. The Adagio shifts to D minor and introduces a measured gravity, with the lineaments of a funeral march surfacing like a shadow within the texture. The Un poco Allegretto looks more towards the minuet than towards the scherzo. The finale, Vivace ma non troppo presto, fuses rondo and sonata and closes with a flash of style hongrois within a form of exemplary solidity. Clara Schumann described the concluding effect as a “marvellous confusion”, akin to a dream after a gypsy evening in Pest.
To hear these quintets in the four-hand transcriptions is to encounter a second face of the work, born with the first and bound to a concrete practice of private reading, rehearsal, correction, and circulation. The transcriptions preserve the original gesture as though in filigree and translate it into another medium, in which harmonic verticality and the continuity of the keyboard lay bare what, in the strings, often remains a secret of colour. The result is music that asks not merely to be heard, but to be inhabited, page by page, within the patient time of intelligence and of memory.
Giuliano Marco Mattioli © 2026