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

It is admittedly a cliché to state that the chamber music of Johannes Brahms ranks among the very best ever written. But if this is not said, the level at which this Da Vinci Classics album is played may not be fully appreciated. We hear here two original transcriptions, made by the composer himself, of the two extraordinarily beautiful string quintets of Johannes Brahms. Eight years separate the two works, and those eight years are particularly important for Brahms' transition from his mature to his late style. On the one hand, this pair of quintets thus once again represents an example of Brahms' typical habit of composing works within the same genre in pairs (which was a way for him to order his musical thinking and continuously explore new perspectives). On the other hand, the time span (and in part stylistic) gap between the two works prompts us to think about the simple equation of them. It may seem remarkable that Brahms, that giant of chamber music, approached the string quintet relatively late in his career. He had indeed once attempted this form, but the result had been both satisfying and unsatisfying. Satisfying, because the piece had enthusiastically delighted many of his early listeners; unsatisfying, because some of them (and eventually Brahms himself) agreed that the musical ideas and their structure were perfect, but that the instrumentation perhaps was not. Therefore, he first arranged it for two pianos, and later for piano and strings (and in this form it acquired immortal, and well-deserved, fame). After that relative setback, Brahms allowed some time to pass before returning to string quintets; and in the meantime he worked intensively on other string ensembles, such as the string sextet, of course apart from the quartet. It may therefore seem somewhat puzzling to hear these two absolute masterworks of the string repertoire played on a piano. Incidentally, as a pianist I still remember practicing Brahms' own transcription of Bach's Chaconne, exclusively for the left hand, when my brother, a violinist, passing by, exclaimed: "My kingdom for a bow!". Indeed, the piano has, compared to string instruments, two major shortcomings. The first is the absence of "a bow", or the ability to sustain the sound for its entire duration, to change its intensity, expressivity and dynamics. When a piano key is pressed, little can be done about the sound produced. The second shortcoming is related to this and concerns the left-hand technique of the string player, particularly vibrato. Skillful use of vibrato allows the performer to, so to speak, radically change the tone color, the timbre and, consequently, the overall "atmosphere". Why then would one sacrifice the sound of a string quintet for a piano version? There are good reasons for this. The first and most important reason is that Brahms himself made these piano arrangements. They are not only approved, but also deliberately and purposefully created by the artist who wrote the original work. It therefore seems clear that Brahms was convinced that the piano version was not inferior to the original, or at least could withstand the comparison. Second, by reducing the number of players from five to two, the work could be performed more often and thus gain a wider circulation. Of course, the resulting piano pieces are not easy at all, but in practice it was much simpler to find a performance opportunity for a piano duet than for a string quintet. String quintets are usually assembled for a specific purpose, for a particular work or event: while string quartets have a life of their own, it is very unusual to encounter a "permanent" string quintet. (This also depends on the fact that there are at least two main types of string quintets, namely those with two violas and those with two cellos).