String Quartet No. 3 in B‑Flat Major

Brahms’ sense of humour could be gruff, but it could also be affectionately playful, and it is the latter side that emerges in the String Quartet No. 3 (composed in 1875). Brahms dedicated it to a cello-playing friend, Theodor Engelmann, but pointed out in a letter to him that, ironically, there were no cello solos, and that the “Agitato” third movement spotlights the viola, who has a solo “so tender that for its sake you may well change your instrument!” Brahms also revealed that the music was a sort of portrait of Engelmann’s wife: “very pretty—but ingenious!” Women were important to Brahms, even though he never had what we would now call a “serious” relationship. Where Beethoven is invoked in the resolutely minor-key First and Second quartets, here the spirit is much more that of Mozart and Haydn—tender, occasionally wistful, but with a sense of fun that prevails in the end. And even though the cello has no solos, it is very much a key player in the ensemble.