Piano Quartet in E‑Flat Major

Following two years dominated by the prolific composition of songs and orchestral works, Schumann turned in 1842 to a concentrated involvement with chamber music. Extensive study of the string quartets of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven inspired three quartets of his own that summer. In the autumn he added a piano to the mix and created perhaps his best-loved chamber work, the Piano Quintet. Afterwards he slimmed down his forces instrument by instrument, completing the Piano Quartet and a group of Phantasiestücke for piano trio before Christmas. The Piano Quartet—the keyboard joined by violin, viola and cello—has often been overshadowed by the more outgoing Quintet, but is no less finely crafted, the four instruments intertwining both as soloists and as groups of strings against piano. The brief slow introduction outlines a sustained version of the perky four-note theme that will saturate the main "Allegro", and returns to launch a harmonically fraught development in which Schumann’s brilliant contrapuntal virtuosity comes to the fore. The quicksilver “Scherzo” recalls the spirit music of Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, while the slow movement features one of Schumann’s finest yearning cello melodies. The vivacious finale picks up on an idea from the closing moments of the slow movement and once again feeds it exhilaratingly through the contrapuntal mill, building to a thrilling climax in one of the most scintillating fugal conclusions in the whole chamber-music repertoire.