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Think of what we lost as a result of Brahms’s self-critical demand for perfection. We have a better idea now of the manuscripts he destroyed (probably not as many as 20 string quartets that one contemporary estimated) but chamber music clearly took its fair share of losses.
Three piano quartets survive, two of which are recorded here by pianist Krystian Zimerman alongside Maria Nowak (violin), Katarzyna Budnik (viola) and Yuya Okamoto (cello), colleagues with whom he has been performing live in recent years.
Winning the 1975 Chopin Competition temporarily took Zimerman away from chamber music, but now that early enthusiasm has fully returned. He says “all kinds of experiments” were tried before settling on these two Brahms quartets (the First did not get chosen, as he felt that was too well known).
Like so much of Brahms’s music, the Second and Third Piano Quartets are a meeting of classical form and romantic ardour. Performances tend to lean one way or the other, and Zimerman and his colleagues strongly favour the classical. Their performances are generally swifter than rival recordings — though not in their heartfelt playing of the slow movement of the Third Quartet — and they prefer a quality of sound that is lucid and clear.
More warmth of tone would sometimes be welcome, but there is no indulgence here and a minimum of heaviness (Brahms’s piano parts can sound quite dense on a modern piano). Although Zimerman and friends’ performances are not the last word in Brahms, their clarity of thinking is a constant pleasure.
★★★★☆
‘Brahms: Piano Quartets Nos 2 and 3’ is released by DG
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