Progetto Martha Argerich

italiano

Works

Johannes Brahms

Quartet No. 2 in A Major for Piano and Strings, Op. 26

 

Of Brahms’s three quartets for piano and strings (Op. 25, Op. 26and Op. 60), the Quartet No. 2 in A Major is probably the least well-known and the least often performed. Completed in the autumn of 1861, it was virtually contemporaneous with the Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25, but it did not enjoy the public and critical acclaim that had been accorded to the First Quartet: even Eduard Hanslick, the best-known Viennese music critic of the day and usually an ardent champion of Brahms’s music, expressed reservations about it. Although it was written by a composer who was barely twenty-eight years old, the Quartet in A Major is more severe and in many respects more “academic” than the G minor, which ends with a rousing Rondò alla zingarese (Gypsy-style rondo), and its dimensions are more substantial than was common in the Hamburg-born composer’s works. In any case, the slow movement – a Poco adagio in E Major, of elegiac, autumnal beauty – is worthy of Brahms at his best.

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1. Allegro non troppo
2. Poco Adagio
3. Scherzo (Poco Allegro)
4. Finale (Allegro)

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