Piano Quartet No. 3 in C Minor

With rasping strings and scampering piano phrases, Brahms' Piano Quartet No. 3 balances the bleak with the beautiful. It started life as a three-movement failed experiment in the 1850s, but in 1875 the composer reimagined the music in a new key, and with an additional scherzo. By this point Brahms had secured a solid reputation among peers and audiences, and had moved on from the unrequited love that had spurred his initial sketches for the quartet. Nevertheless, the composer continued to teeter on the edge of desperation, telling his publisher to include an image of the suicidal hero in Goethe's Die Leiden des jungen Werther (The Sorrows of Young Werther)—doctored to look like Brahms—with the sheet music. The brooding beginning is leavened (to some extent) by the “Scherzo”, which, although not obviously playful, provides lighter string textures and chordal piano melodies. The mood immediately becomes more sombre in the subsequent third movement (“Andante”), with a sweeping cello solo that is eventually passed to the piano. The concluding “Finale” quotes from the main theme in Felix Mendelssohn's Piano Trio, developing into a whirring revival of ideas heard in the first movement.