Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor

By the time Brahms completed his Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor in 1861, he was widely recognised as one of Germany’s leading young composers. Five years before, his close friend and champion Robert Schumann had died under tragic circumstances in a mental asylum, and the Quartet’s heartfelt “Andante” third movement was one of several pieces that Brahms dedicated to his memory. It was therefore especially appropriate that the pianist at the work’s Hamburg premiere was Schumann’s widow, Clara, whom Brahms had supported devotedly since her husband’s death. He had never forgotten Schumann’s prediction that he was “the chosen one” destined to carry Beethoven’s mantle into the second half of the 19th century, which in part explains the Beethovenian emotional thrust of the Quartet’s thematic outlines—and also the fact that Brahms chose this particular work to officially announce himself as a pianist and chamber music composer to Beethoven’s old music stomping ground of Vienna. Brahms unexpectedly counterbalances the intense and expansive opening “Allegro” with an “Intermezzo” whose introspective, half-whispered musings were destined to become a creative trademark. The ardent “Andante” Schumann homage finds emotional release in a wild Hungarian “Zingarese” finale of unstoppable rhythmic drive. Modernist Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) thought so highly of the work—and of Brahms in general—that he made a wholescale orchestration in 1937, to which dancer George Balanchine added choreography in 1966.