Special offer. Brahms: Piano Quintet
William Howard (piano)
The Schubert Ensemble
There's a sense that the Schubert Ensemble hold back in the work's outer movements, rather than pushing forward as do their rivals. This pays dividends in the slow movement, played somewhat...
Special offer. Brahms: Piano Quintet
William Howard (piano)
The Schubert Ensemble
Purchase product
There's a sense that the Schubert Ensemble hold back in the work's outer movements, rather than pushing forward as do their rivals. This pays dividends in the slow movement, played somewhat...
About
“As with so much in Brahmsʼ life, the genesis of his Piano Quintet, Op.34, was fraught with indecision and introspection...” Brahms first wrote this work scored for string quintet, and after taking to heart criticism from Joachim, he not only re-scored the work for two pianos, but destroyed the original string quintet manuscript.
Published in 1874, this new du version was not without problems, and it was Clara Schumann who pointed these out, causing Brahms to set about re-arranging the music once more, this time for piano quintet.
This was no simple re-scoring, for the piano quintet medium has unique demands, but, at last, “Brahms had found the medium through which his material could speak most eloquently.”
It is the quintet in this final guise that we know it best, and that the Schubert Ensemble deliver here on this recording in an assured and expressive performance, allowing the sophisticated detail of Brahmsʼ writing to throw us into the depths of emotion he conjures up.
Brahms was a master of delivering emotional impact, even in short works, and the Quintet is accompanied on this disc by four short, solo piano works which amply demonstrate this capability. Performed by the Schubert Ensembleʼs founder and pianist, William Howard, the rhythmic and textural complexity of these pieces is remarkable.
Contents and tracklist
Awards and reviews
December 2010
There's a sense that the Schubert Ensemble hold back in the work's outer movements, rather than pushing forward as do their rivals. This pays dividends in the slow movement, played somewhat literally at the outset but developing into a most touching reading by the time the opening music returns.
9th September 2010
...the Schubert Ensemble's performance is as much about vulnerability as it is about virility. The scale is big: it feels, at times, like a symphony for five players. But it's also full of sidesteps into emotional uncertainty...The Andante is astonishingly sad and the scherzo bleakly obsessive, while the finale's false endings still take you by surprise, however well you know the work.
22nd August 2010
[The Piano Quintet] is a signature work for the Schubert Ensemble, whose direct sound sings vividly here. Pianist William Howard's thoughtful, sepia-tinted reading of the Opus 117 Intermezzi and the second Opus 118 Intermezzo complete the disc, the last as gentle as a kiss.
