String Quartet No. 3 in B‑Flat Major

Op. 67

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.

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