Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos. 2 & 3

“I’m absolutely convinced that I can make people fall in love with these pieces,” pianist Krystian Zimerman says of his recording of two of Brahms’ Piano Quartets. But, as he tells Apple Music Classical, these magical works are among Brahms’ lesser-known. Despite coming from a musical family that regularly played chamber music, he adds, “I never heard them in my childhood.” Part of the reason for their unfamiliarity may stem from the fact that, as Zimerman explains, each instrumental part requires the technique and artistry of a concerto soloist. But the rewards, he says, are tremendous: “It’s incredibly powerful music—the best chamber music I know. It is dramatic, sometimes heartbreaking; the slow movements are absolutely beautiful.” When played by a superb team of musicians as here, the results are compelling. There’s the fraught passion of Piano Quartet No. 3: at the heart of its stormy drama is the beautiful and consoling “Andante” third movement, each player having their moment of expressive lyrical beauty. Conversely, the more pastoral, reflective Quartet No. 2 of 1862 has its moments of troubled introspection. This is conveyed with understated potency by Zimerman’s spooky arpeggios which disturb the tranquillity of the “Poco adagio” second movement before breaking out into an impassioned theme. Zimerman first encountered these works in the late 1970s, during one of his visits to the legendary pianist Arthur Rubinstein. “We had been working on Brahms’ First Piano Concerto, so he allowed me to listen to his recording with the Guarneri Quartet of the Brahms Piano Quartets. He was very proud of this, his last recording. I was swept away and immediately in love with those pieces.” For his own ultimate Brahms team, Zimerman gathered three fine young musicians: violinist Maria Nowak, violist Katarzyna Budnik, and cellist Yuya Okamoto. Together, they toured the Brahms Quartets extensively, including a very memorable concert in Japan: “We played in Hyogo during one of the biggest typhoons. It was one of the most incredible experiences for me, because this typhoon was raging over our head, and here we were inside playing [the tempestuous] Quartet No. 3. Suddenly it sounded completely different, and in this way the music grew in our imagination.” They then took the Quartets into a studio, working on them for four days. But their final decision was to go with the recording of their live concert given immediately before their sessions with some patches: “There’s a continuity and flow in a live concert that you can’t recreate in the studio,” explains Zimerman. “In the studio you can so easily lose the context as to why you played a theme in a particular way. But in the concert, we really went for the kill.”