Luogo e data di registrazione		Herkules-Saal, Munchen (Germania) - 24-28 gennaio 1979 (Op. 34) Théatre Vevey, Vevey (Svizzera) - 18-31 agosto 1967 (Op. 51 No. 1) La Salle des Remparts, La Tour-de-Peilz (Svizzera): - 13-24 giugno 1970 (Op. 51 No. 2) - 15-27 gennaio 1971 (Op. 67)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Engineer		Rainer Brock (Op. 34), Vittorio Negri | Klaus Scheibe (Op. 34), Tony Buczynski
	Prima Edizione LP		Philips | 6717 010 | 3 LPs
	Prima Edizione CD		Vedi link alla prima edizione in long playing.
	Note		Ripubblicazione in cofanetto dell'opera brahmsiana. Maurizio Pollini appears by courtesy of Polydor International GmbH.

PIANO QUINTET, OP. 34 Though ready to take up every challenge that came his way except that of opera, from the age of 20 until only three years before his death in 1897 Brahms always found particular delight in writing chamber music for his friends. As a craftsman he was a perfectionist: “Go over it again and again until there is not a bar you could improve on” he once counselled a would-be composer. “Whether it is beautiful also is an entirely different matter, but perfect it must be.” Anything that fell short of his ideal he suppressed. At other times he wrestled with his ideas for months, sometimes even years, before deeming them ready for publication. In inception the F minor Piano Quintet dates from the traumatic decade following the mental breakdown of his great champion, Robert Schumann, when Brahms, still in his twenties, was struggling to canalise his own love for Clara Schumann, the greatest female pianist of her generation, into purely musical channels. It was the scoring of the quintet that caused so much heart-searching. Having drafted the work in 1862 as a string quintet, he began to suspect - with his friend, Joachim, in agreement - that he had not found the right medium for ideas so powerful. Accordingly he recast it the following year as a sonata for two pianos. But when Clara, who greatly admired the original, tried over the new version both with Anton Rubinstein and the conductor, Hermann Levi, she begged Brahms to think again since “a host of beautiful thoughts are lost on the piano.” His ultimate solution in 1864 was to combine aspects of both versions in a piano quintet, published in 1865 with a dedication to Princess Anna of Hesse, who had so enjoyed the work when first hearing it played on two pianos by Clara and Brahms himself. (In gratitude for her dedication she presented him, as an avid collector, with the original manuscript of Mozart’s G minor Symphony, K. 550.) Significantly Brahms, too, liked the two-piano version enough to authorise publication in this alternative guise some years later. The work reveals his fast developing maturity as a craftsman in its concentration and compression, not least in the opening Allegro non troppo. After a dramatic gathering of momentum, the first subject, so ominously introduced at the start, emerges in its full stormy might and drive in the twelfth bar. Though transition and second subject (in the remote key of C sharp minor) are more lyrical, there is little emotional assuagement until the enharmonic modulation into D flat major at the end of the exposition. The development, mostly dark-hued, works to a masterly climax before a mysterious pianissimo glides into the recapitulation. The tug between A flat and A natural here is forewarning of prolonged major-minor tonal conflict in the course of the recapitulation. The Andante un poco adagio, with its tenderly rocking A flat major main theme, largely sustained by the piano both at the start and on its reprise, brings peace after storm. Nor is the movement’s glowing inner calm undermined by the more assertive confidence of the central section. The powerfully driven C minor scherzo, heightened in urgency by syncopation at the start, is contrasted with a suaver central trio derived from the last of the three motifs of the scherzo section itself. The finale’s Poco sostenuto introduction is more personally poignant, sometimes even stabbing in its intensity, than anything else in the work. The change to Allegro non troppo marks the start of a sonata-form argument, its F minor first theme succinct and resolute, its second subject, elusive in tonality, suggesting wistful conciliation. Craftsmanship reaches its peak in the transformation and combination of both in the highly charged coda. ©1982 Joan Chissell STRING QUARTETS, Op. 51 & 67 The fact that Brahms left only three string quartets and delayed publication of the first until 1873 when he was 40 years old was partly Schumann’s fault. For it was Schumann who first championed the younger composer and, indeed, regarded him as something of a musical Messiah. “This is he that should come,” he wrote to their mutual friend, Joseph Joachim, the violinist, meaning that he saw in Brahms a worthy heir to Beethoven’s throne. These sentiments he soon made public in his “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik” in 1853 when Brahms was only 20 and had not a published work to his name. These predictions placed an almost intolerable burden of responsibility on the young Brahms and the result was a ruthlessly self-critical attitude towards his own work - particularly in the fields of the symphony and the string quartet, those areas in which Beethoven was supreme. This does not mean that Brahms lacked confidence in his own ability - or that he was afraid to acknowledge Beethoven’s supremacy (in the Op. 51 quartets he frequently doffs his hat quite openly). Nor was he afraid of tackling string-quartet writing. We know from his correspondence that he wrote about 20 other string quartets before the C minor of Op. 51 - none of which passed his rigorous self-set standards, though many must surely have been masterpieces. The Op. 51 quartets, therefore, are not the first he wrote but rather the first he chose to let posterity hear. When he began work on the C minor quartet is not certain, but it may have been as early as 1865 when we find Joachim writing to him to ask if a C minor quartet with which he was occupied was not yet finished for performance. Brahms’s publisher Simrock was also anxious for some quartets and in June 1869 Brahms wrote to him begging his patience and mentioning a possible rehearsal. The same month Clara Schumann recorded in her diary that she had heard two “lovely” quartet movements by Brahms, one of which was not quite to her taste. Whether Brahms was influenced more by what he heard in rehearsal or by Clara’s opinion is not clear, but the Op. 51 quartets in any event were held back for further amendment. Not until 1873 and two further try-outs did the composer put the two works resignedly in Simrock’s hands. Both were dedicated to his friend Dr. Theodor Billroth, a Viennese surgeon and talented amateur string-player. Yet it seems odd that the dedication, of one at least, should not have been to his closer friend Joachim, particularly when the second quartet employs thematically the musical mottoes the two used at the height of their friendship - Joachim’s F A E, representing “Frei aber einsam” (Free but lonely), and Brahms’s F A F, “Frei aber froh” (Free but happy). This minor mystery is deepened by the fact that Brahms wrote to Billroth revealing the intention to dedicate one of the Op. 51 quartets to him. Brahms’s biographer Kalbeck formed the not unlikely theory that the composer withheld the Joachim dedication in a fit of ill-temper. The third of the Brahms quartets was not so long in the making. It was completed in 1875 and published as Op. 67  the following year, with a dedication to Professor Engelmann of Utrecht. As was the case with Schumann's three string quartets, the third work is different in character from its predecessors. Having met the unspoken challenge of Beethoven within himself to the best of his ability in Op. 51, Brahms relaxes in a work of almost pastoral character which seems to draw its inspiration more from Haydn and Mozart. Op. 51 Nos. 1 and 2 The opening movements of both Op. 51 quartets are characteristically built from the smallest of thematic bricks. In the C minor’s sombre, almost tragic first movement significant motifs are combined to form short subject groups rather than longer well-defined themes. What might have been a similar tragic atmosphere in the A minor’s first movement is dispelled by a more traditionally lyrical second subject. But the immense power remains, lent by the terseness of the main theme; this opens with Joachim’s F A E motto (eventually fused with Brahms’s F A F in the coda) and provides ideal material for complex contrapuntal treatment. Both slow movements, though rich and imaginative, are based on very simple ABA structures. The melancholic "Romanze" of No. 1 has two distinct themes, the second inescapably recalling the Cavatina of Beethoven’s Op. 130. The central section of No. 2’s A major slow movement is a minor-key developmental episode which opens vehemently with violin and cello in close canon against dramatic tremolos in the inner parts. The scherzos do little to provide light relief. The F minor movement of the first quartet sidles along so warily and uneasily that the plodding pizzicati of the simple trio seem almost cheerful: that of the second, labelled Quasi minuetto, moderato is also in the minor and more scherzo characteristics are to be found in the trio (Allegretto vivace) in the major. Like a series of Chinese boxes this too has a central episode in which Brahms recalls the “minuetto” theme and ingeniously combines it with the trio theme in a canon four in two. The short finales take their impetus from the scherzos and sum up their respective works both emotionally and thematically. Echoes of previous movements are found everywhere. In the C minor finale (in sonata-rondo form) the unison opening, for instance, has the same stabbing rhythm and final falling interval as the opening of the first movement while the actual notes are those which begin the “Romanze.” In the A minor rondo finale there are similar borrowings and one is not surprised to find one of the episodes featuring another fusion of the Brahms/Joachim mottoes. Basic form in both cases is freely adapted. In the C minor the development is merely a formal gesture, for the whole movement is one organic growth. The A minor is in three main sections, in which the rondo theme and episodes alike occur. One of the episodes, appearing first in C major, might pass for a second subject; in the central section this appears in F and makes its final appearance in A major. The main theme is developed in the course of the episodes. Op. 67 The different character of Op. 67 is immediately apparent in the first movement where the basic sonata-form contrasts are rhythmic rather than melodic or harmonic. Brahms employs three subject groups this time (the second and third presented in the dominant and recalled in the tonic). The separate elements of the Haydnesque first and third groups have quite distinct rhythms which Brahms delights in playing off against one another. The restful aria-like slow movement in F is again in broad ABA form with powerful double stops adding drama to the central section before the main theme re-emerges in a violin-cello dialogue. The D minor scherzo, yet another in form only, is really a passionate outpouring by the viola with a muted accompaniment; this continues in the trio, opening in A minor, and rest comes only in the coda which soothes the ruffled rhythms and coaxes the music into a peaceful D major close. The finale, again haunted by Haydn, is in the form of a theme and eight variations. Even so Brahms still manages to summarise the whole work as he does in the Op. 51 quartets. In the seventh variation the opening theme of the first movement emerges and persists, with reminiscences of other movements, to the coda where it appears simultaneously with the finale theme in augmentation. A. David Hogarth