Kantorow / Lozakovich / Power / Julien-Laferrière

The two piano quartets by Brahms could hardly be more different. The second is sunny, peppered with references and echoes of composer colleagues from across the centuries in the playful scherzo and it closes with an energetic Hungarian-inspired finale. The third piano quartet, conversely, arguably handles the unrequited love of the composer for Clara Schumann – the pianist and wife of his close friend Robert Schumann. Passionate and sombre at the beginning, then wallowing in melancholy and ultimately serene at the end – Brahms himself described the piece as having arisen in a »Werther mood«. It is fortunate that, considering his sorrow, the composer did not choose the same fate as Goethe‘s hero in the famous epistolary novel.