Today the Brahms contemporary Arnold Krug is hardly known at all as a composer – undeservedly so, as the two chamber compositions recorded here impressively demonstrate. Like Mendelssohn and Brahms, this pianist, composer, and music teacher was born in Hamburg. Unlike his famous fellow composers, however, he made this city by the Elbe the center of his artistic activity after his studies under Carl Reinecke at the Leipzig Conservatory and several years of teaching at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. He initially served as the director of his own choral society, the Arnold Krug Singakademie, then as a composition teacher at the Bernuth Conservatory, and finally as the conductor of the Altona Singakademie. In 1896 Krug was awarded the first prize in the Stelzner Competition of the Dresden Conservatory for his String Sextet op. 68. Felix Draeseke, who was a member of the jury, wrote, 'In the Stelzner Competition your sextet 'Ernst ist die Kunst' received the majority of votes, and it brings me special joy to communicate this to you because in my view too it is thus that what was truly the most valuable of the submissions has been crowned.' The Piano Quartet first and foremost displays Krug's strengths in the fascinating design of harmonically colourful atmospheric pictures and genre scenes.