Sunday Classics preview: Brahms vs. Brahms -- the Opp. 25 and 26 Piano Quartets

The third movement, Andante con moto of Brahms's First Piano Quartet is played by pianist Brian Suits, violinist Kyung Sun Lee, violist Sheila Browne, and cellist Brooks Whitehouse.

by Ken

We've had frequent occasion, most recently in connection with the stark contrasts in the consecutive Beethoven symphonies starting with No. 3, the Eroica, to ponder how often -- and, really, unsurprisingly, composers need to give expression to dramatically different expressive content. Which seemed a natural enough segue into a piece I've been wanting to write about for some time now: the second of Brahms's three quartets for piano and strings, the A major, Op. 26.

Way back when, we heard some of the First Piano Quartet, which I think it would be safe to say has emerged as the general favorite among the set, along with the piano quartets' own emergence from what was for a long time hard-to-explain obscurity. (Nowadays you can hardly turn a street corner without bumping into at least one of them.) And I love it dearly. But somewhere along the line my special affection switched to the Second.

What's interesting about these two quartets, from our present perspective, is that they were largely conceived at the same time. And for tonight I thought it would be interesting just to sample them, in performances by the same team, so that's what we're going to do in the click-through.


IT'S OP. 25 VS. OP. 26 IN TONIGHT'S
BRAHMS-OFF -- CLICK HERE

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